THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


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,,_.^    - 


THE    BEAUTY    AND 
THE    BOLSHEVIST 


THE  BEAUTY  AND 
THE  BOLSHEVIST 

By 
ALICE  DUER  MILLER 

Author  of 

"The  Charm  School"  "Ladies  must  Live" 
"Come  out  of  the  Kitchen"  etc. 

Illustrated 


Harper  85   Brothers  Publishers 

New  York  and  London 


THE  BEAUTY  AND  THE  BOLSHEVIST 


Copyright.  1920,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  October,  1920 

I-U 


75 
S' 

M  (tt  3-6- 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

"I  beg  your  pardon.     Is  this  a  private  raft?"    .     .     Frontispiece 
"Mr.  Moreton,  the  Newport  boat  leaves  at  five- 
thirty"       Facing  p.      8 

"I'll  be  there  in  five  minutes,  in  a  little  blue  car"       "          72 
"Suppose  you  find  you  do  hate  being  poor?"     .    .       "         96 


694937 


THE    BEAUTY    AND 
THE    BOLSHEVIST 


THE    BEAUTY   AND 
THE    BOLSHEVIST 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  editor  of  that  much-abused  New 
York  daily,  Liberty,  pushed  back  his 
editorial  typewriter  and  opened  one  letter 
in  the  pile  which  the  office-boy  —  no  respecter 
of  persons  —  had  just  laid  upon  the  desk 
while  whistling  a  piercing  tune  between  his 
teeth. 

The  letter  said: 

DEAR  BEN,  —  I  hate  to  think  what  your  feelings 
will  be  on  learning  that  I  am  engaged  to  be  married 
to  a  daughter  of  the  capitalistic  class.  Try  to  over 
come  your  prejudices,  however,  and  judge  Eugenia 
as  an  individual  and  not  as  a  member  of  a  class. 
She  has  very  liberal  ideas,  reads  your  paper,  and  is 
content  to  go  with  me  to  Monroe  College  and  lead 
the  life  of  an  instructor's  wife.  You  will  be  glad  to 
know  that  Mr.  Cord  disapproves  as  much  as  you 

[1] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

do,  and  will  not  give  his  daughter  a  cent,  so  that 
our  life  will  be  as  hard  on  the  physical  side  as  you 
in  your  most  affectionate  moments  could  desire. 
Mr.  Cord  is  under  the  impression  that  lack  of  an 
income  will  cool  my  ardor.  You  see  he  could  not 
think  worse  of  me  if  he  were  my  own  brother. 

Yours, 

DAVID. 

The  fine  face  of  the  editor  darkened.  It 
was  the  face  of  an  idealist — the  deep-set, 
slowly  changing  eyes,  the  high  cheek  bones, 
but  the  mouth  closed  firmly,  almost  ob 
stinately,  and  contradicted  the  rest  of  the 
face  with  a  touch  of  aggressiveness,  just  as 
in  Lincoln's  face  the  dreamer  was  contra 
dicted  by  the  shrewd,  practical  mouth.  He 
crossed  his  arms  above  the  elbow  so  that  one 
long  hand  dangled  on  one  side  of  his  knees 
and  one  on  the  other — a  favorite  pose  of  his 
— and  sat  thinking. 

The  editor  was  often  called  a  Bolshevist — 
as  who  is  not  in  these  days?  For  language 
is  given  us  not  only  to  conceal  thought,  but 
often  to  prevent  it,  and  every  now  and  then 
when  the  problems  of  the  world  become  too 
complex  and  too  vital,  some  one  stops  all 
thought  on  a  subject  by  inventing  a  tag,  like 

[2] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"witch"    in    the    seventeenth    century,    or 
"Bolshevist"  in  the  twentieth. 

Ben  Moreton  was  not  a  Bolshevist;  indeed, 
he  had  written  several  editorials  to  show  that, 
in  his  opinion,  their  doctrines  were  not  sound, 
but  of  course  the  people  who  denounced  him 
never  thought  of  reading  his  paper.  He  was 
a  socialist,  a  believer  in  government  owner 
ship,  and,  however  equably  he  attempted  to 
examine  any  dispute  between  capital  and 
labor,  he  always  found  for  labor.  He  was 
much  denounced  by  ultraconservatives,  and 
perhaps  their  instinct  was  sound,  for  he  was 
educated,  determined,  and  possessed  of  a 
personality  that  attached  people  warmly,  so 
that  he  was  more  dangerous  than  those  whose 
doctrines  were  more  militant.  He  was  not 
wholly  trusted  by  the  extreme  radicals.  His 
views  were  not  consistently  agreeable  to 
either  group.  For  instance,  he  believed  that 
the  conscientious  objectors  were  really  con 
scientious,  a  creed  for  which  many  people 
thought  he  ought  to  be  deported.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  doubted  that  Wall  Street  had 
started  the  war  for  its  own  purposes,  a 
skepticism  which  made  some  of  his  friends 
think  him  just  fit  for  a  bomb. 

[3] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

The  great  problem  of  his  life  was  how  to 
hold  together  a  body  of  liberals  so  that  they 
could  be  effective.  This  problem  was  going 
to  be  immensely  complicated  by  the  marriage 
of  his  brother  with  the  daughter  of  a  con 
spicuous  capitalist  like  William  Cord. 

He  pushed  the  buzzer  on  his  desk  and 
wrote  out  the  following  telegram: 

David  Moreton,  Care  William  Cord, 

Newport,  R.  I. 
Am  taking  boat  Newport  to-night.    Meet  me. 

Ben. 

No  one  answered  his  buzzer,  but  presently 
a  boy  came  in  collecting  copy,  and  Moreton 
said  to  him: 

"Here,  get  this  sent,  and  ask  Klein  to  come 
here.  He's  in  the  composing  room." 

And  presently  Mr.  Klein  entered,  in  the 
characteristic  dress  of  the  newspaper  man — 
namely,  shirt  sleeves  and  a  green  shade  over 
his  eyes. 

"Look  here,  Ben!"  he  exclaimed  in  some 
excitement.  Here's  a  thousand-dollar  check 
just  come  in  for  the  strike  fund.  How's  that 
for  the  second  day?" 

"Good  enough,"  said  Ben,  who  would 
[4] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

ordinarily  have  put  in  a  good  hour  rejoicing 
over  such  unexpected  good  fortune,  but 
whose  mind  was  now  on  other  things.  "I 
have  to  go  out  of  town  to-night.  You'll  be 
here,  won't  you,  to  lock  the  presses?  And, 
see  here,  Leo,  what  is  the  matter  with  our 
book  page?" 

"Pretty  rotten  page,"  replied  Klein. 

"I  should  say  it  was — all  about  taxes  and 
strikes  and  economic  crises.  I  told  Green 
never  to  touch  those  things  in  the  book  re 
views.  Our  readers  get  all  they  want  of  that 
from  us  in  the  news  and  the  editorials — hot 
ter,  better  stuff,  too.  I've  told  him  not  to 
touch  'em  in  the  book  page,  and  he  runs  noth 
ing  else.  He  ought  to  be  beautiful — ought 
to  talk  about  fairies,  and  poetry,  and  twelfth- 
century  art.  What's  the  matter  with  him?" 

"He  doesn't  know  anything,"  said  Klein. 
"That's  his  trouble.  He's  clever,  but  he 
doesn't  know  much.  I  guess  he  only  began 
to  read  books  a  couple  years  ago.  They 
excite  him  too  much.  He  wouldn't  read  a 
fairy  story.  He'd  think  he  was  wasting 
time." 

"Get  some  one  to  help  him  out." 

"Who'd  I  get?" 

[5] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Look  about.  I've  got  to  go  home  and 
pack  a  bag.  Ask  Miss  Cox  what  time  that 
Newport  boat  leaves." 

"Newport!  Great  heavens,  Ben!  What 
is  this?  A  little  week-end?" 

"A  little  weak  brother,  Leo." 

"David  in  trouble  again?" 

Moreton  nodded.  "He  think's  he's  going 
to  marry  William  Cord's  daughter." 

Klein,  who  was  Ben's  friend  as  well  as  his 
assistant,  blanched  at  the  name. 

"Cord's  daughter!"  he  exclaimed,  and  if 
he  had  said  Jack-the-ripper's,  he  could  not 
have  expressed  more  horror.  "Now  isn't  it 
queer,"  he  went  on,  musingly,  "that  David, 
brought  up  as  he  has  been,  can  see  anything 
to  attract  him  in  a  girl  like  that?" 

Ben  was  tidying  his  desk  preparatory  to 
departure — that  is  to  say,  he  was  pushing  all 
the  papers  far  enough  back  to  enable  him  to 
close  the  roller  top,  and  he  answered,  ab 
sently: 

"Oh,  I  suppose  they're  all  pretty  much  the 
same — girls." 

"Why,  what  do  you  mean?"  said  Leo, 
reproachfully.  "How  can  a  girl  who's  been 
brought  up  to  be  a  parasite — to  display  the 

[6] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

wealth  of  her  father  and  husband,  and  has 
never  done  a  useful  thing  since  she  was  born — 
Why,  a  woman  was  telling  me  the  other  day — 
I  got  caught  in  a  block  in  the  subway  and 
she  was  next  me — awfully  interesting,  she 
was.  She  sewed  in  one  of  these  fashion 
able  dressmaking  establishments — and  the 
things  she  told  me  about  what  those  women 
spend  on  their  clothes — underclothes  and 
furs  and  everything.  Now  there  must  be 
something  wrong  with  a  woman  who  can 
spend  money  on  those  things  when  she  knows 
the  agony  of  poverty  right  around  her.  You 
can't  compare  that  sort  of  woman  with  a 
self-respecting,  self-supporting  girl — " 

At  this  moment  the  door  opened  and  Miss 
Cox  entered.  She  wore  a  short-sleeved, 
low-neck,  pink-satin  blouse,  a  white-satin 
skirt,  open-work  stockings,  and  slippers  so 
high  in  the  heels  that  her  ankles  turned  in 
ward.  Her  hair  was  treated  with  henna  and 
piled  untidily  on  the  top  of  her  head.  She 
was  exactly  what  Klein  had  described — a 
self-respecting,  self-supporting  girl,  but,  on 
a  superficial  acquaintance,  men  of  Cord's 
group  would  have  thought  quite  as  badly  of 
her  as  Klein  did  of  fashionable  women. 
2  [7] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

They  would  have  been  mistaken.  Miss  Cox 
supported  her  mother,  and,  though  only 
seventeen,  denied  herself  all  forms  of  enjoy 
ment  except  dress  and  an  occasional  movie. 
She  was  conscientious,  hard-working,  accu 
rate,  and  virtuous.  She  loved  Ben,  whom 
she  regarded  as  wise,  beautiful,  and  generous, 
but  she  would  have  died  rather  than  have 
him  or  anyone  know  it. 

She  undulated  into  the  room,  dropped  one 
hip  lower  than  the  other,  placed  her  hand  upon 
it  and  said,  with  a  good  deal  of  enunciation : 

"Oh,  Mr.  Moreton,  the  Newport  boat 
leaves  at  five-thirty." 

"Thank  you  very  much,  Miss  Cox,"  said 
Ben,  gravely,  and  she  went  out  again. 

"It  would  be  a  terrible  thing  for  Dave  to 
make  a  marriage  like  that,"  Klein  went  on 
as  soon  as  she  had  gone,  "getting  mixed  up 
with  those  fellows.  And  it  would  be  bad  for 
you,  Ben — " 

"I  don't  mean  to  get  mixed  up  with  them," 
said  Ben. 

"No,  I  mean  having  Dave  do  it.  It 
would  kill  the  paper;  it  would  endanger  your 
whole  position;  and  as  for  leadership,  you 
could  never  hope — " 

[8] 


'Mr.  Moreton,  the  Newport  boat  leaves  at  five-thirty" 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Now,  look  here,  Leo.  You  don't  think 
I  can  stop  my  brother's  marrying  because  it 
might  be  a  poor  connection  for  me?  The 
point  is  that  it  wouldn't  be  good  for  Dave — 
to  be  a  poorly  tolerated  hanger-on.  That's 
why  I'm  going  hot-foot  to  Newport.  And 
while  I'm  away  do  try  to  do  something  about 
the  book  page.  Get  me  a  culture-hound — 
get  one  of  these  Pater  specialists  from  Har 
vard.  Or,"  he  added,  with  sudden  inspira 
tion  when  his  hand  was  already  on  the  door, 
"get  a  woman — she'd  have  a  sense  of  beauty 
and  would  know  how  to  jolly  Green  into 
agreeing  with  her."  And  with  this  the 
editor  was  gone. 

It  was  the  end  of  one  of  those  burning 
weeks  in  August  that  New  York  often  knows. 
The  sun  went  down  as  red  as  blood  every 
evening  behind  the  Palisades,  and  before 
the  streets  and  roofs  had  ceased  to  radiate 
heat  the  sun  was  up  again  above  Long  Island 
Sound,  as  hot  and  red  as  ever.  As  Ben  went 
uptown  in  the  Sixth  Avenue  Elevated  he 
could  see  pale  children  hanging  over  the  rail 
ings  of  fire  escapes,  and  behind  them  catch 
glimpses  of  dark,  crowded  rooms  which  had 
all  the  disadvantages  of  caves  without  the 

[9] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

coolness.    But  to-day  he  was  too  concen 
trated  on  his  own  problem  to  notice. 

Since  Ben's  sixteenth  year  his  brother 
David  had  been  dependent  on  him.  Their 
father  had  been  professor  of  economics  in  a 
college  in  that  part  of  the  United  States 
which  Easterners  describe  as  the  "Middle 
West."  In  the  gay  days  when  muck-raking 
was  at  its  height  Professor  Moreton  had  lost 
his  chair  because  he  had  denounced  in  his 
lecture  room  financial  operations  which  to 
day  would  be  against  the  law.  At  that  time 
they  were  well  thought  of,  and  even  practiced 
by  the  eminent  philanthropist  who  had  en 
dowed  the  very  chair  which  Moreton  occu 
pied.  The  trustees  felt  that  it  was  unkind 
and  unnecessary  to  complicate  their  already 
difficult  duties  by  such  tactlessness,  and  their 
hearts  began  to  turn  against  Moreton,  as 
most  of  our  hearts  turn  against  those  who 
make  life  too  hard  for  us.  Before  long  they 
asked  him  to  resign  on  account  of  his  age — 
he  was  just  sixty  and  extremely  vigorous; 
but  immediately  afterward,  having  been 
deeply  surprised  and  hurt,  he  did  what  Gold 
smith  recommends  to  lovely  woman  under 
not  dissimilar  circumstances — he  died.  He 
[10] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

left  his  two  young  sons — he  had  married  late 
in  life — absolutely  unprovided  for.  Ben,  the 
elder  of  the  two,  was  sixteen,  and  just  ready 
for  college;  but  he  could  not  give  four 
precious  years  to  an  academic  degree.  He 
went  to  work.  With  the  background  of  an 
educated  environment  and  a  very  sound 
knowledge  of  economic  questions,  breathed 
in  from  his  earliest  days,  he  found  a  place  at 
once  on  a  new  paper — or,  rather,  on  an  old 
paper  just  being  converted  into  a  new  organ 
of  liberalism — Liberty.  It  was  independent 
in  politics,  and  was  supposed  to  be  inde 
pendent  in  economic  questions,  but  by  the 
time  Ben  worked  up  to  the  editorship  it  was 
well  recognized  to  be  an  anticapitalist  sheet. 
The  salary  of  its  editor,  though  not  large, 
was  sufficient  to  enable  him  to  send  his 
younger  brother  through  college,  with  the 
result  that  David,  a  little  weak,  a  little  self- 
indulgent,  a  little — partly  through  physical 
causes — disinclined  to  effort,  was  now  a  poet, 
a  classicist  and  an  instructor  in  a  fresh-water 
college.  Ben  made  him  an  allowance  to 
enable  him  to  live — the  college  not  thinking 
this  necessary  for  its  instructors.  But  during 
the  war  Ben  had  not  been  able  to  manage  the 
[11] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

allowance,  because,  to  the  surprise  of  many 
of  his  friends,  Ben  had  volunteered  early. 

Although  the  reasons  for  doing  this  seemed 
absurdly  simple  to  him,  the  decision  had  been 
a  difficult  one.  He  was  a  pacifist — saw  no 
virtue  in  war  whatsoever.  He  wished  to 
convert  others  to  his  opinion — unlike  many 
reformers  who  prefer  to  discuss  questions 
only  with  those  who  already  agree  with  them. 
He  argued  that  the  speeches  of  a  man  who 
had  been  through  war,  or,  better  still,  the 
posthumous  writings  of  one  who  has  been 
killed  in  war,  would  have  more  weight  with 
the  public  than  the  best  logic  of  one  who  had 
held  aloof.  But  his  radical  friends  felt  that 
he  was  using  this  argument  merely  as  an 
excuse  for  choosing  the  easy  path  of  con 
formity,  while  the  few  ultraconservatives 
who  mentioned  the  matter  at  all  assumed 
that  he  had  been  drafted  against  his  will. 
Afterward,  when  the  war  was  over  and  his 
terrible  book,  War,  appeared,  no  one  was 
pleased,  for  the  excellent  reason  that  it  was 
published  at  a  moment  when  the  whole  world 
wanted  to  forget  war  entirely.  The  pay  of 
a  private,  however,  had  not  allowed  him  to 
continue  David's  allowance,  and  so  David, 
[121 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

displaying  unusual  energy,  had  found  a  job 
for  himself  as  tutor  for  the  summer  to  William 
Cord's  son.  Ben  had  not  quite  approved 
of  a  life  that  seemed  to  him  slightly  para 
sitical,  but  it  was  healthy  and  quiet  and, 
above  everything,  David  had  found  it  for 
himself,  and  initiative  was  so  rare  in  the 
younger  man  that  Ben  could  not  bear  to 
crush  it  with  disapproval. 

Increasingly,  during  the  two  years  he  was 
in  France,  Ben  was  displeased  by  David's 
letters.  The  Cords  were  described  as  kindly, 
well-educated  people,  fond  one  of  another, 
considerate  of  the  tutor,  with  old-fashioned 
traditions  of  American  liberties.  Ben  asked 
himself  if  he  would  have  been  better  pleased 
if  David's  employers  had  been  cruel,  vulgar, 
and  blatant,  and  found  the  answer  was  in  the 
affirmative.  It  would,  he  thought,  have  been 
a  good  deal  safer  for  David's  integrity  if  he 
had  not  been  so  comfortable. 

For  two  summers  Ben  had  made  no  pro 
test,  but  the  third  summer,  when  the  war 
was  over  and  the  allowance  again  possible, 
he  urged  David  not  to  go  back  to  Newport. 
David  flatly  refused  to  yield.  He  said  he 
saw  no  reason  why  he  should  go  on  taking 
[13] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Ben's  money  when  this  simple  way  of  earning 
a  full  living  was  open  to  him.  Wasn't  Ben's 
whole  theory  that  everyone  should  be  self- 
supporting?  Why  not  be  consistent? 

Ignorant  people  might  imagine  that  two 
affectionate  brothers  could  not  quarrel  over 
an  issue  purely  affectionate.  But  the  More- 
tons  did  quarrel — more  bitterly  than  ever 
before,  and  that  is  saying  a  great  deal.  With 
the  extraordinary  tenacity  of  memory  that 
develops  under  strong  emotion,  they  each 
contrived  to  recall  and  to  mention  everything 
which  the  other  had  done  that  was  wrong, 
ridiculous,  or  humiliating  since  their  earliest 
days.  They  parted  with  the  impression  on 
David's  part  that  Ben  thought  him  a  self- 
indulgent  grafter,  and  on  Ben's  side  that 
David  thought  him  a  bully  solely  interested 
in  imposing  his  will  on  those  unfortunate 
enough  to  be  dependent  on  him. 

It  was  after  half  past  four  when,  having 
walked  up  five  flights  of  stairs,  he  let  himself 
into  his  modest  flat  on  the  top  floor  of  an  old- 
fashioned  brownstone  house.  As  he  opened 
the  door,  he  called, 

"Nora!" 

No  beautiful  partner  of  a  free-love  affair 
[141 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

appeared,  but  an  elderly  woman  in  spec 
tacles  who  had  once  been  Professor  Moreton's 
cook,  and  now,  doing  all  the  housework  for 
Ben,  contrived  to  make  him  so  comfortable 
that  the  editor  of  a  more  radical  paper  than 
his  own  had  described  the  flat  as  "a  bourgeois 
interior." 

"Nora,"  said  Ben,  "put  something  in  my 
bag  for  the  night — I'm  going  to  Newport  in 
a  few  minutes." 

He  had  expected  a  flood  of  questions,  for 
Nora  was  no  looker-on  at  life,  and  he  was 
surprised  by  her  merely  observing  that  she 
was  glad  he  was  getting  away  from  the  heat. 
The  truth  was  that  she  knew  far  more  about. 
David  than  he  did.  She  had  consistently 
coddled  David  since  his  infancy,  and  he  told 
her  a  great  deal.  Besides,  she  took  care  of 
his  things  when  he  was  at  Ben's.  She  had 
known  of  sachets,  photographs,  and  an  en 
graved  locket  that  he  wore  on  his  watch- 
chain.  She  was  no  radical.  She  had  seen 
disaster  come  upon  the  old  professor  and 
attributed  it,  not  to  the  narrowness  of  the 
trustees,  but  to  the  folly  of  the  professor. 
She  disapproved  of  most  of  Ben's  friends, 
and  would  have  despised  his  paper  if  she 
[15] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

ever  read  it.  The  only  good  thing  about  it 
in  her  estimation  was,  he  seemed  to  be  able 
"to  knock  a  living  out  of  it" — a  process 
which  Nora  regarded  with  a  sort  of  gay  cas- 
ualness.  She  did  not  blame  him  for  making 
so  little  money  and  thus  keeping  her  house 
keeping  cramped,  but  she  never  in  her  own 
mind  doubted  that  it  would  be  far  better  if 
he  had  more.  The  idea  that  David  was 
about  to  marry  money  seemed  to  her  simply 
the  reward  of  virtue — her  own  virtue  in 
bringing  David  up  so  well.  She  knew  that 
Mr.  Cord  opposed  the  marriage,  but  she  sup 
posed  that  Ben  would  arrange  all  that.  She 
had  great  confidence  in  Ben.  Still  he  was 
very  young,  very  young,  so  she  gave  him  a 
word  of  advice  as  she  put  his  bag  into  his 
hand. 

"Don't  take  any  nonsense.  Remember 
you're  every  bit  as  good  as  they.  Only  don't, 
for  goodness'  sake,  Mr.  Ben,  talk  any  of  your 
ideas  to  them.  A  rich  man  like  Mr.  Cord 
wouldn't  like  that." 

Ben  laughed.  "How  would  you  like  me 
to  bring  you  home  a  lovely  heiress  of  my 
own?"  he  said. 

She  took  a  thread  off  his  coat.  "Only 
[16] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

don't  let  her  come  interfering  in  my  kitchen," 
she  said,  and  hurried  him  away.  He  had  a 
good  deal  of  courage,  but  he  had  not  enough 
to  tell  Nora  he  was  going  to  Newport  to  stop 
her  darling's  marriage. 

The  Newport  boat  gets  to  Newport  about 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  experienced 
travelers,  if  any  such  choose  this  method  of 
approach,  go  on  to  Fall  River  and  take  a 
train  back  to  Newport,  arriving  in  time  for  a 
comfortable  nine-o'clock  breakfast.  But  Ben 
was  not  experienced,  and  he  supposed  that 
when  you  took  a  boat  for  Newport  and 
reached  Newport  the  thing  to  do  was  to  get 
off  the  boat. 

It  had  been  a  wonderful  night  on  the 
Sound,  and  Ben  had  not  been  to  bed,  partly 
because,  applying  late  on  a  Friday  evening, 
he  had  not  been  able  to  get  a  room,  but  partly 
because  the  moon  and  the  southerly  breeze 
and  the  silver  shores  of  Long  Island  and  the 
red  and  white  lighthouses  had  been  too  beauti 
ful  to  leave.  Besides,  he  had  wanted  to 
think  out  carefully  what  he  was  going  to  say 
to  his  brother. 

To  separate  a  man  from  the  woman  he 
loves,  however  unwisely,  has  some  of  the 
[17] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

same  disadvantages  as  offering  a  bribe — one 
respects  the  other  person  less  in  proportion 
as  one  succeeds.  What,  Ben  said  to  himself, 
could  he  urge  against  a  girl  he  did  not  know? 
Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  if  he  had  known  her, 
his  objections  would  have  seemed  regrettably 
personal.  Either  way,  it  was  difficult  to 
know  what  to  say.  He  wondered  what  Cord 
had  said,  and  smiled  to  think  that  here  was 
one  object  for  which  he  and  Cord  were  co 
operating — only  Cord  would  never  believe  it. 
That  was  one  trouble  with  capitalists — they 
always  thought  themselves  so  damned  desira 
ble.  And  Ben  did  not  stop  to  inquire  how  it 
was  that  capitalists  had  gained  this  impres 
sion. 

On  the  pier  he  looked  about  for  David,  but 
there  was  no  David.  Of  course  the  boy  had 
overslept,  or  hadn't  received  his  telegram — 
Ben  said  this  to  himself,  but  somehow  the 
vision  of  David  comfortably  asleep  in  a  lux 
urious  bed  in  the  Cords's  house  irritated  him. 

His  meditations  were  broken  in  upon  by 
a  negro  boy  with  an  open  hack,  who  volun 
teered  to  "take  him  up  for  fifty  cents."  It 
sounded  reasonable.  Ben  got  in  and  they 
moved  slowly  down  the  narrow  pier,  the 
[18] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

horses'  hoofs  clumping  lazily  on  the  wooden 
pavement.  Turning  past  the  alley  of 
Thames  Street,  still  alight  at  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  Ben  stopped  at  the  sug 
gestion  of  his  driver  and  left  his  bag  at  a 
hotel,  and  then  they  went  on  up  the  hill, 
past  the  tower  of  the  Skeleton  in  Armor,  past 
old  houses  with  tall,  pillared  porticoes,  remi 
niscent  of  the  days  when  the  South  patron 
ized  Newport,  and  turned  into  Bellevue 
Avenue — past  shops  with  names  familiar  to 
Fifth  Avenue,  past  a  villa  with  bright-eyed 
owls  on  the  gateposts,  past  many  large,  silent 
houses  and  walled  gardens. 

The  air  was  very  cool,  and  now  and  then 
the  scent  of  some  flowering  bush  trailed  like 
a  visible  cloud  across  their  path.  Then  sud 
denly  the  whole  avenue  was  full  of  little  red 
lights,  like  the  garden  in  "Faust"  when 
Mephistopheles  performs  his  magic  on  it. 
Here  and  there  the  huge  headlights  of  a  car 
shone  on  the  roadway,  magnifying  every  rut 
in  the  asphalt,  and  bringing  out  strange, 
vivid  shades  in  the  grass  and  the  hydrangea 
bushes.  They  were  passing  a  frowning  pal 
ace  set  on  a  piece  of  velvet  turf  as  small  as 
a  pocket  handkerchief — so  small  that  the 
[19] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

lighted  windows  were  plainly  visible  from 
the  road. 

"Stop,"  said  Ben  to  his  driver.  He  had 
suddenly  realized  how  long  it  must  be  before 
he  could  rouse  the  Cord  household. 

He  paid  his  driver,  got  out,  and  made  his 
way  up  the  driveway  toward  the  house. 
Groups  of  chauffeurs  were  standing  about 
their  cars — vigorous,  smartly  dressed  men, 
young  for  the  most  part.  Ben  wondered  if 
it  were  possible  that  they  were  content  with 
the  present  arrangement,  and  whether  their 
wives  and  children  were  not  stifling  in  the 
city  at  that  very  moment.  He  caught  a 
sentence  here  and  there  as  he  passed.  "And, 
believe  me,"  one  was  saying,  "as  soon  as  he 
got  into  the  box  he  did  not  do  a  thing  to  that 
fellar  from  Tiverton — "  Ben's  footsteps 
lagged  a  little.  He  was  a  baseball  fan.  He  al 
most  forgave  the  chauffeurs  for  being  content. 
They  seemed  to  him  human  beings,  after  all. 

He  approached  the  house,  and,  walking 
past  a  narrow,  unroofed  piazza,  he  found 
himself  opposite  a  long  window.  He  looked 
straight  into  the  ballroom.  The  ball  was  a 
fancy  ball — the  best  of  the  season.  It  was 
called  a  Balkan  Ball,  which  gave  all  the 
[20] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

guests  the  opportunity  of  dressing  pretty 
much  as  they  pleased.  The  wood  of  the  long 
paneled  room  was  golden,  and  softened  the 
light  from  the  crystal  appliques  along  the  wall, 
and  set  off  the  bright  dresses  of  the  dancers 
as  a  gold  bowl  sets  off  the  colors  of  fruit. 

Every  now  and  then  people  stepped  out  on 
the  piazza,  and  as  they  did  they  became 
audible  to  Ben  for  a  few  seconds.  First,  two 
middle-aged  men,  solid,  bronzed,  laughing 
rather  wickedly  together.  Ben  drew  back, 
afraid  of  what  he  might  overhear,  but  it 
turned  out  to  be  no  very  guilty  secret.  "My 
dear  fellow,"  one  was  saying,  "I  gave  him  a 
stroke  a  hole,  and  he's  twenty  years  younger 
than  I  am — well,  fifteen  anyhow.  The  trouble 
with  these  young  men  is  that  they  lack — " 

Ben  never  heard  what  it  was  that  young 
men  lacked. 

Next  came  a  boy  and  a  girl,  talking  eagerly, 
the  girl's  hand  gesticulating  at  her  round, 
red  lips.  Ben  had  no  scruples  in  overhearing 
them — theirs  appeared  to  be  the  universal 
secret.  But  here  again  he  was  wrong.  She 
was  saying:  "Round  and  round — not  up  and 
down.  My  dentist  says  that  if  you  always 
brush  them  round  and  round — " 
[21] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Then  two  young  men — boys,  with  ciga 
rettes  drooping  from  their  lips;  they  were 
saying,  "I  haven't  pitched  a  game  since 
before  the  war,  but  he  said  to  go  in  and  get 
that  Tiverton  fellow,  and  so — "  Ben  saw 
that  he  was  in  the  presence  of  the  hero  of  the 
late  game.  He  forgave  him,  too. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  had  never  given  the 
fashionable  world  enough  attention  to  hate 
it.  He  knew  that  Leo  Klein  derived  a  very 
revivifying  antagonism  from  reading  about 
it,  and  often  bought  himself  an  entrance  to 
the  opera  partly  because  he  loved  music,  but 
partly,  Ben  always  thought,  because  he  liked 
to  look  up  at  the  boxes  and  hate  the  occu 
pants  for  their  jewels  and  inattention.  But 
Ben  watched  the  spectacle  with  as  much 
detachment  as  he  would  have  watched  a 
spring  dance  among  the  Indians. 

And  then  suddenly  his  detachment  melted 
away,  for  a  lovely  girl  came  through  the 
window — lovely  with  that  particular  and 
specific  kind  of  loveliness  which  Ben  thought 
of  when  he  used  the  word — his  kind.  He 
used  to  wonder  afterward  how  he  had  known 
it  at  that  first  glimpse,  for,  in  the  dim  light 
of  the  piazza,  he  could  not  see  some  of  her 
[22] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

greatest  beauties — the  whiteness  of  her  skin, 
white  as  milk  where  her  close,  fine,  brown 
hair  began,  or  the  blue  of  the  eyes  set  at  an 
angle  which  might  have  seemed  Oriental  in 
eyes  less  enchanting  turquoise  in  color.  But 
he  could  see  her  slenderness  and  grace.  She 
was  dressed  in  clinging  blues  and  greens  and 
she  wore  a  silver  turban.  She  leaned  her 
hands  on  the  railings — she  turned  them  out 
along  the  railings;  they  were  slender  and 
full  of  character — not  soft.  Ben  looked  at 
the  one  nearest  him.  With  hardly  more 
than  a  turn  of  his  head  he  could  have  kissed 
it.  The  idea  appealed  to  him  strongly;  he 
played  with  it,  just  as  when  he  was  a  child 
in  a  college  town  he  had  played  with  the  idea 
of  getting  up  in  church  and  walking  about 
on  the  backs  of  the  pews.  This  would  be 
pleasanter,  and  the  subsequent  getaway 
even  easier.  He  glanced  at  the  dark  lawn 
behind  him;  there  appeared  to  be  no  obsta 
cle  to  escape. 

Perhaps,  under  the  spell  of  her  attraction 
for  him,  and  the  knowledge  that  he  would 
never  see  her  again,  he  might  actually  have 
done  it,  but  she  broke  the  trance  by  speaking 
to  a  tall,  stolid  young  man  who  was  with  her. 
3  [23] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"No,  Eddie,"  she  said,  as  if  answering 
something  he  had  said  some  time  ago,  "I 
really  was  at  home,  at  just  the  time  I  said* 
only  this  new  butler  does  hate  you  so — " 

"You  might  speak  to  him  about  it — you 
might  even  get  rid  of  him,"  replied  the  young 
man,  in  the  tone  of  one  deeply  imposed  upon. 

"Good  butlers  are  so  rare  nowadays." 

"And  are  devoted  friends  so  easy  to  find?" 

"No,  but  a  good  deal  easier  than  butlers, 
Eddie  dear." 

The  young  man  gave  an  exclamation  of 
annoyance.  "Let  us  find  some  place  out  of 
the  way.  I  want  to  speak  to  you  serious 
ly — "  he  began,  and  they  moved  out  of  ear 
shot — presumably  to  a  secluded  spot  of 
Eddie's  choosing. 

When  they  had  gone  Ben  felt  distinctly 
lonely,  and,  what  was  more  absurd,  slighted, 
as  if  Eddie  had  deliberately  taken  the  girl 
away  from  him — out  of  reach.  How  silly, 
he  thought,  for  Eddie  to  want  to  talk  to  her, 
when  it  was  so  clear  the  fellow  did  not  know 
how  to  talk  to  her.  How  silly  to  say,  in  the 
sulky  tone,  "Are  devoted  friends  so  easy  to 
find?"  Of  course  they  were — for  a  girl  like 
that — devoted  friends,  passionate  lovers,  and 
[24] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

sentimental  idiots  undoubtedly  blocked  her 
path. 

It  might  have  been  some  comfort  to  him 
to  know  that  in  the  remote  spot  of  his  own 
choosing,  a  stone  bench  under  a  purple  beech, 
Eddie  was  simply  going  from  bad  to  worse. 

"Dear  Crystal,"  he  began,  with  that  irri 
tating  reasonableness  of  manner  which  im 
plies  that  the  speaker  is  going  to  be  reasonable 
for  two,  "I've  been  thinking  over  the  situa 
tion.  I  know  that  you  don't  love  me,  but 
then  I  don't  believe  you  will  ever  be  deeply 
in  love  with  any  one.  I  don't  think  you  are 
that  kind  of  woman." 

"Oh,  Eddie,  how  dreadful!" 

"I  don't  see  that  at  all.  Just  as  well,  per 
haps.  You  don't  want  to  get  yourself  into 
such  a  position  as  poor  Eugenia." 

"I  do,  I  would.  I'd  give  anything  to  be 
as  much  in  love  as  Eugenia." 

"What?  With  a  fellow  like  that !  A  com 
plete  outsider." 

"Outside    of  what?    The  human  race?" 

"Well,  no,"  said  Eddie,  as  if  he  were  yield 
ing  a  good  deal,  "but  outside  of  your  tradi 
tions  and  your  set." 

"My  set!    Good  for  him  to  be  outside  of 
[25] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

it,  I  say.  What  have  they  ever  done  to 
make  anyone  want  to  be  inside  of  it?  Why, 
David  is  an  educated  gentleman.  To  hear 
him  quote  Horace — " 

"Horace  who?" 

"Really,  Eddie." 

"Oh,  I  see.  You  mean  the  poet.  That's 
nothing  to  laugh  at,  Crystal.  It  was  a 
natural  mistake.  I  thought,  of  course,  you 
meant  some  of  those  anarchists  who  want  to 
upset  the  world." 

Crystal  looked  at  him  more  honestly  and 
seriously  than  she  had  yet  done. 

"Well,  don't  you  think  there  is  something 
wrong  with  the  present  arrangement  of 
things,  Eddie?" 

"No,  I  don't,  and  I  hate  to  hear  you  talk 
like  a  socialist." 

"I  am  a  socialist." 

"You're  nothing  of  the  kind." 

"I  suppose  I  know  what  I  am." 

"Not  at  all— not  at  all." 

"I  certainly  think  the  rich  are  too  rich, 
while  the  poor  are  so  horridly  poor." 

"you'd  get  on  well  without  your  maid  and 
your  car  and  your  father's  charge  accounts 
at  all  the  shops,  wouldn't  you?" 
[26] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Though  agreeable  to  talk  seriously  if  you 
agree,  it  is  correspondingly  dangerous  if  you 
disagree.  Crystal  stood  up,  trembling  with  an 
emotion  which  Eddie,  although  he  was  rather 
angry  himself,  considered  utterly  unaccount 
able. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  almost  proudly,  "I  am. 
luxurious,  I  am.  dependent  on  those  things. 
But  whose  fault  is  that?  It's  the  way  I  was 
brought  up — it's  all  wrong.  But,  even 
though  I  am  dependent  on  them,  I  believe 
I  could  exist  without  them.  I'd  feel  like 
killing  myself  if  I  didn't  think  so.  Some 
times  I  want  to  go  away  and  find  out  if  I 
couldn't  live  and  be  myself  without  all  this 
background  of  luxury.  But  at  the  worst — • 
I'm  just  one  girl — suppose  I  were  weak  and 
couldn't  get  on  without  them?  That 
wouldn't  prove  that  they  are  right.  I'm 
not  so  blinded  that  I  can't  see  that  a  system 
by  which  I  profit  may  still  be  absolutely 
wrong.  But  you  always  seem  to  think, 
Eddie,  that  it's  part  of  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  that  you  should  have  every 
thing  you've  always  had." 

Eddie  rose,  too,  with  the  manner  of  a  man 
who  has  allowed  things  to  go  far  enough. 
[27] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Look  here,  my  dear  girl,"  he  said,  "I  am  a 
man  and  I'm  older  than  you,  and  have  seen 
more  of  the  world.  I  know  you  don't  mean 
any  harm,  but  I  must  tell  you  that  this  is 
very  wicked,  dangerous  talk." 

"Dangerous,  perhaps,  Eddie,  but  I  can't 
see  how  it  can  be  wicked  to  want  to  give  up 
your  special  privileges." 

"Where  in  the  world  do  you  pick  up  ideas 
like  this?" 

"I  inherited  them  from  an  English  ancestor 
of  mine,  who  gave  up  all  that  he  had  when 
he  enlisted  in  Washington's  army." 

"You  got  that  stuff,"  said  Eddie,  brushing 
this  aside,  "from  David  Moreton,  and  that 
infernal  seditious  paper  his  brother  edits — 
and  that  white-livered  book  which  I  haven't 
read  against  war.  I'd  like  to  put  them  all 
in  jail." 

"It's  a  pity,"  said  Crystal,  "that  your  side 
can't  think  of  a  better  argument  than  putting 
everyone  who  disagrees  with  you  in  jail." 

With  this  she  turned  and  left  him,  and, 
entering  the  ballroom,  flung  herself  into  the 
arms  of  the  first  partner  she  met.  It  was 
a  timid  boy,  who,  startled  by  the  eagerness 
with  which  she  chose  him,  with  her  bright 
[28] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

eyes  and  quickly  drawn  breath,  was  just 
coming  to  the  conclusion  that  a  lovely,  rich, 
and  admired  lady,  had  fallen  passionately 
in  love  with  him,  when  with  equal  sudden 
ness  she  stepped  out  of  his  arms  and  was 
presently  driving  her  small,  -open  car  down 
the  avenue. 

Under  the  purple  beech  Eddie,  left  alone, 
sank  back  on  the  stone  bench  and  considered, 
somewhat  as  the  persecutors  of  Socrates 
may  have  done,  suitable  punishments  for 
those  who  put  vile,  revolutionary  ideas  into 
the  heads  of  young  and  lovely  women. 

In  the  meantime  Ben,  who  had  enjoyed 
the  party  more  than  most  of  the  invited 
guests,  and  far  more  than  the  disconsolate 
Eddie,  had  left  his  vantage  point  at  the  win 
dow.  He  had  suddenly  become  aware  of  a 
strange  light  stealing  under  the  trees,  and, 
looking  up,  he  saw  with  surprise  that  the 
stars  were  growing  small  and  the  heavens 
turning  steel-color — in  fact,  that  it  was  dawn. 
Convinced  that  sunrise  was  a  finer  sight 
than  the  end  of  the  grandest  ball  that  ever 
was  given,  he  made  his  way  down  a  shabby 
back  lane,  and  before  long  came  out  on  the 
edge  of  the  cliffs,  with  the  whole  panorama 

[29] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

of  sunrise  over  the  Atlantic  spread  out  before 
him. 

He  stood  there  a  moment,  somebody's 
close,  well-kept  lawn  under  his  feet,  and  a 
pale-pink  sea  sucking  in  and  out  on  the  rocks 
a  hundred  feet  below.  The  same  hot,  red 
sun  was  coming  up;  there  wasn't  a  steady 
breeze,  but  cool  salt  puffs  came  to  him  now 
and  then  with  a  breaking  wave.  It  was 
going  to  be  a  hot  day,  and  Ben  liked  swim 
ming  better  than  most  things  in  life.  He 
hesitated. 

If  he  had  turned  to  the  left,  he  would  have 
come  presently  to  a  public  beach  and  would 
have  had  his  swim  conventionally  and  in  due 
time.  But  some  impulse  told  him  to  turn 
to  the  right,  and  he  began  to  wander  west 
ward  along  the  edge  of  the  cliffs — always 
on  his  left  hand,  space  and  the  sea,  and  on 
his  right,  lawns  or  gardens  or  parapets 
crowned  by  cactus  plants  in  urns,  and  behind 
these  a  great  variety  of  houses — French  cha 
teaux  and  marble  palaces  and  nice  little  white 
cottages,  and,  finally,  a  frowning  Gothic 
castle.  All  alike  seemed  asleep,  with  empty 
piazzas  and  closed  shutters,  and  the  only 
sign  of  life  he  saw  in  any  of  them  was  one  pale 
[30] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

housemaid  shaking  a  duster  out  of  a  window 
in  an  upper  gable. 

At  last  he  came  to  a  break  in  the  cliffs — a 
cove,  with  a  beach  in  it,  a  group  of  buildings 
obviously  bathing-houses.  The  sacredness 
of  this  pavilion  did  not  .occur  to  Ben;  indeed, 
there  was  nothing  to  suggest  it.  He  entered 
it  light-heartedly  and  was  discouraged  to 
find  the  door  of  every  cabin  securely  locked. 
The  place  was  utterly  deserted.  But  Ben 
was  persistent,  and  presently  he  detected  a 
bit  of  a  garment  hanging  over  a  door,  and, 
pulling  it  out,  he  found  himself  in  possession 
of  a  man's  bathing  suit.  A  little  farther 
on  he  discovered  a  telephone  room  unlocked. 
Here  he  undressed  and  a  minute  later  was 
swimming  straight  out  to  sea. 

The  level  rays  of  the  sun  were  doing  to  the 
water  just  what  the  headlights  of  the  motors 
had  done  to  the  road;  they  were  enlarging 
every  ripple  and  edging  the  deep  purple- 
blue  with  yellow  light.  Except  for  a  fishing 
dory  chunking  out  to  its  day's  work,  Ben  had 
the  sea  and  land  to  himself.  He  felt  as  if 
they  were  all  his  own,  and,  for  a  socialist, 
was  guilty  of  the  sin  of  pride  of  possession. 
He  was  enjoying  himself  so  much  that  it 
[31] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

was  a  long  time  before  he  turned  to  swim 
back. 

He  was  swimming  with  his  head  under 
water  most  of  the  time  so  that  he  did  not  at 
once  notice  that  a  raft  he  had  passed  on  his 
way  out  was  now  occupied.  As  soon  as  he 
did  see  it  his  head  came  up.  It  was  a  female 
figure,  and  even  from  a  distance  he  could  see 
that  she  was  unconscious  of  his  presence 
and  felt  quite  as  sure  of  having  the  world  to 
herself  as  he  was.  She  was  sitting  on  the 
edge  of  the  raft,  kicking  a  pair  of  the  prettiest 
legs  in  the  world  in  and  out  of  the  water. 
They  were  clad  in  the  thinnest  of  blue-silk 
stockings,  the  same  in  which  a  few  minutes 
before  she  had  been  dancing,  but  not  being 
able  to  find  any  others  in  her  bathhouse, 
she  had  just  kept  them  on,  recklessly  ignor 
ing  the  inevitable  problem  of  what  she  should 
wear  home.  She  was  leaning  back  on  her 
straightened  arms,  with  her  head  back,  look 
ing  up  into  the  sky  and  softly  whistling  to 
herself.  Ben  saw  in  a  second  that  she  was 
the  girl  of  the  silver  turban. 

He  stole  nearer  and  nearer,  cutting  silently 
through  the  water,  and  then,  when  he  had 
looked  his  fill,  he  put  his  head  down  again, 
[32] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

splashed  a  little,  and  did  not  look  up  until 
his  hand  was  on  the  raft,  when  he  allowed 
an  expression  of  calm  surprise  to  appear  on 
his  face. 

"I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said.  "Is  this 
a  private  raft?" 

The  young  lady,  who  had  had  plenty  of 
time  since  the  splash  to  arrange  her  counte 
nance,  looked  at  him  with  a  blank  coldness, 
and  then  suddenly  smiled. 

"I  thought  it  was  a  private  world,"  she 
replied. 

"It's  certainly  a  very  agreeable  one,"  said 
Ben,  climbing  on  the  raft.  "And  what  I 
like  particularly  about  it  is  the  fact  that  no 
one  is  alive  but  you  and  me.  Newport  appears 
to  be  a  city  of  the  dead." 

"It  always  was,"  she  answered,  contemp 
tuously. 

"Oh,  come.  Not  an  hour  ago  you  were 
dancing  in  blue  and  green  and  a  silver  turban 
at  a  party  over  there,"  and  he  waved  his  hand 
in  the  direction  from  which  he  had  come. 

"Did  you  think  it  was  a  good  ball?" 

"I  enjoyed  it,"  he  answered,  truthfully. 

Her  face  fell.     "How  very  disappointing," 
she  said.     "I  didn't  see  you  there." 
[331 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Disappointing  that  you  did  not  see  me 
there?'' 

"No,"  she  replied,  and  then,  less  posi 
tively;  "No;  I  meant  it  was  disappointing 
that  you  were  the  kind  of  man  who  went  to 
parties — and  enjoyed  them." 

"It  would  be  silly  to  go  if  you  didn't  enjoy 
them,"  he  returned,  lightly. 

She  turned  to  him  very  seriously .  '  'You  're 
right,"  she  said;  "it  is  silly — very  silly,  and 
it's  just  what  I  do.  I  consider  parties  like 
that  the  lowest,  emptiest  form  of  human 
entertainment.  They're  dull;  they're  ex 
pensive;  they  keep  you  from  doing  intelli 
gent  things,  like  studying;  they  keep  you 
from  doing  simple,  healthy  things,  like  sleep 
ing  and  exercising ;  they  make  you  artificial ; 
they  make  you  civil  to  people  you  despise — 
they  make  women,  at  least,  for  we  must  have 
partners — " 

"But  why  do  you  go,  then?" 

She  was  silent,  and  they  looked  straight 
and  long  at  each  other.  Then  she  said, 
gravely: 

"The  answer's  very  humiliating.  I  go 
because  I  haven't  anything  else  to  do." 

He  did  not  reassure  her.  "Yes,  that's 
[341 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

bad,"  he  said,  after  a  second.  "But  of  course 
you  could  not  expect  to  have  anything  else 
to  do  when  all  your  time  is  taken  up  like  that. 
'When  the  half  gods  go,'  you  know,  'the  gods 


arrive.'  " 


The  quotation  was  not  new  to  Crystal ;  in 
fact,  she  had  quoted  it  to  Eddie  not  very 
long  before,  apropos  of  another  girl  to  whom 
he  had  shown  a  mild  attention,  but  it  seemed 
to  her  as  if  she  took  in  for  the  first  time  its 
real  meaning.  Whether  it  was  the  dawn, 
exhaustion,  a  stimulating  personality,  love, 
or  mere  accident,  the  words  now  came  to  her 
with  all  the  beauty  and  truth  of  a  religious 
conviction.  They  seemed  to  shake  her  and 
make  her  over.  She  felt  as  if  she  could  never 
be  sufficiently  grateful  to  the  person  who 
had  thus  made  all  life  fresh  and  new  to  her. 

"Ah,"  she  said,  very  gently,  "that's  it.  I 
see.  You  won't  believe  me,  but  I  assure 
you  from  now  on  I  mean  to  be  entirely  differ 
ent." 

"Please,  not  too  different." 

"Oh   yes,   yes,    as   different   as   possible. 
I've  been  so  unhappy,  and  unhappy  about 
nothing  definite — that's  the  worst  kind,  only 
that  I  have  not  liked  the  life  I  was  leading. 
[35] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

She  glanced  at  him  appealingly.  She 
had  tried  to  tell  this  simple  story  to  so  many 
people,  for  she  had  many  friends,  and  yet 
no  one  had  ever  really  understood.  Some 
had  told  her  she  was  spoiled,  more,  that  there 
was  no  use  in  trying  to  change  her  life  because 
she  would  soon  marry;  most  of  them  had 
advised  her  to  marry  and  find  out  what  real 
trouble  was.  Now,  as  she  spoke  she  saw 
that  this  strange  young  man  from  the  sea 
not  only  understood  her  discontent,  but 
thought  it  natural,  almost  commonplace. 

She  poured  it  all  out.  "Only  the  worst 
thing,"  she  ended,  "is  that  I'm  not  really 
any  good.  There  isn't  anything  else  that 
I  know  how  to  do." 

"I  doubt  that,"  he  answered,  and  she  began 
to  doubt  it,  too.  "I'm  sure  there  are  lots 
of  things  you  could  do  if  you  put  your  mind 
on  it.  Did  you  ever  try  to  write?" 

Now,  indeed,  she  felt  sure  that  he  was 
gifted  with  powers  more  than  mortal — to 
have  guessed  this  secret  which  no  one  else 
had  ever  suspected.  She  colored  deeply. 

"Why,  yes,"  she  answered,  "I  think  I  can 
little,  only  I've  so  little  education." 

'So  little  education?" 
[361 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Yes,  I  belong  to  the  cultivated  classes — 
three  languages  and  nothing  solid. 

"Well,  you  know,  three  languages  seem 
pretty  solid  to  me,"  said  Ben,  who  had 
wrestled  very  unsuccessfully  with  the  French 
tongue.  "You  speak  three  languages,  and 
let  me  see,  you  know  a  good  deal  about  paint 
ing  and  poetry  and  jade  and  Chinese  por 
celains?" 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders  contemp 
tuously.  "Oh,  of  course  everyone  knows 
about  those  things,  but  what  good  are  they?" 

They  were  a  good  deal  of  good  to  Ben. 
He  pressed  on  toward  his  final  goal.  "What 
is  your  attitude  toward  fairies?"  he  asked, 
and  Miss  Cox  would  have  heard  in  his  tone 
a  faint  memory  of  his  voice  when  he  engaged 
a  new  office-boy. 

Her  attitude  toward  fairies  was  perfectly 
satisfactory,  and  he  showed  so  much  appre 
ciation  that  she  went  on  and  told  him  her 
great  secret  in  full.  She  had  once  had  some 
thing  published  and  been  paid  money  for  it 
— fifteen  dollars — and  probably  never  in  her 
life  had  she  spoken  of  any  sum  with  so  much 
respect.  It  had  been,  well,  a  sort  of  a  re 
view  of  a  new  illustrated  edition  of  Hans 
[37] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Andersen's  Tales,  treating  them  as  if  they  were 
modern  stories,  commenting  on  them  from 
the  point  of  view  of  morals  and  probability 
— making  fun  of  people  who  couldn't  give 
themselves  up  to  the  charm  of  a  story  unless 
it  tallied  with  their  own  horrid  little  experi 
ences  of  life.  She  told  it,  she  said,  very 
badly,  but  perhaps  he  could  get  the  idea. 

He  got  it  perfectly.  "Good,  "he  said.  "I'll 
give  you  a  job.  I'm  a  newspaper  editor." 

"Oh,"  she  exclaimed,  "you're  not  Mr. 
Munsey,  are  you,  or  Mr.  Reid,  or  Mr.  Ochs?" 

Her  knowledge  of  newspaper  owners  seemed 
to  come  to  a  sudden  end. 

"No,"  he  answered,  smiling,  "nor  even 
Mr.  Hearst.  I  did  not  say  I  owned  a  news 
paper.  I  edit  it.  I  need  some  one  just  like 
you  for  my  book  page,  only  you'd  have  to 
come  to  New  York  and  work  hard,  and  there 
wouldn't  be  very  much  salary.  Can  you 
work?" 

"Anyone  can." 

"Well,  will  you?" 

"Indeed  I  will."     (It  was  a  vow.)     "And 
now  I  must  go.     I  have  to  drive  myself 
home  in  an  open  car,  and  the  tourists  do 
stare  at  one  so — in  fancy  dress." 
[38] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Yes,  but  when  am  I  to  see  you  again?  I 
leave  Newport  to-night." 

"Telephone  me — 2079 — and  we'll  arrange 
to  do  something  this  afternoon." 

"And  whom  shall  I  ask  for?" 

"Telephone  at  two-fifteen  to  the  minute, 
and  I'll  answer  the  telephone  myself." 

She  evidently  rather  enjoyed  the  mystery 
of  their  not  knowing  each  other's  names. 
But  a  black  idea  occurred  to  Ben.  She  had 
slid  off  the  raft  and  swum  a  few  strokes 
before  he  shouted  to  her: 

"Look  here.  Your  name  isn't  Eugenia, 
is  it?" 

She  waved  her  hand.  "No,  I'm  Crystal, 
she  called  back. 

"Good-by,  Crystal." 

This  time  she  did  not  wave,  but,  swim 
ming  on  her  side  with  long,  easy  strokes,  she 
gave  him  a  sweet,  reassuring  look. 

After  she  had  gone  he  lay  down  on  the  raft 
with  his  face  buried  in  his  arms.  A  few 
moments  before  he  had  thought  he  could 
never  see  enough  of  the  sunrise  and  the  sea, 
but  now  he  wanted  to  shut  it  out  in  favor 
of  a  much  finer  spectacle  within  him.  So 
this  was  love.  Strange  that  no  one  had  ever 

4  [39] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

been  able  to  prepare  you  for  it.  Strange 
that  poets  had  never  been  able  to  give  you 
a  hint  of  its  stupendous  inevitability.  He 
wondered  if  all  miracles  were  like  that — so 
simple — so — 

Suddenly  he  heard  her  voice  near  him. 
He  lifted  his  head  from  his  arms.  She  was 
there  in  the  water  below  him,  clinging  to 
the  raft  with  one  hand. 

"I  just  came  back  to  tell  you  something," 
she  said.  "I  thought  you  ought  to  know  it 
before  things  went  any  farther." 

He  thought,  "Good  God!  she's  in  love 
with  some  one  else!"  and  the  horror  of  the 
idea  made  him  look  at  her  severely. 

"I'm  not  perhaps  just  as  I  seem — I  mean 
my  views  are  rather  liberal.  In  fact" — she 
brought  it  out  with  an  effort — "I'm  almost 
a  socialist." 

The  relief  was  so  great  that  Ben  couldn't 
speak.  He  bent  his  head  and  kissed  the 
hand  that  had  tempted  him  a  few  hours 
before. 

She  did  not  resent  his  action.    Her  special 

technique  in  such  matters  was  to  pretend 

that  such  little  incidents  hardly  came  into 

the  realm  of  her  consciousness.    She  said, 

[401 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"At  two-fifteen,  then,"  and  swam  away  for 
good. 

Later  in  the  day  a  gentleman  who  owned 
both  a  bathing  house  and  a  bathing  suit  on 
Bailey's  beach  was  showing  the  latter  pos 
session  to  a  group  of  friends 

"No  one  can  tell  me  that  Newport  isn't 
damp,"  he  said.  "I  haven't  been  in  bathing 
for  twenty-four  hours,  and  yet  I  can  actually 
wring  the  water  out  of  my  suit." 


CHAPTER  II 

'T^HAT  same  morning,  about  ten  o'clock, 
•*•    Mr.  William  Cord  was  shut  up  in  the 
study  of  his  house — shut  up,  that  is,  as  far 
as  entrance  from  the  rest  of  the  house  was 
concerned,  but  very  open  as    to  windows 
looking  out  across  the  grass  to  the  sea.     It 
was  a  small  room,  and  the  leather  chairs 
which  made  up  most  of  its  furnishings  were 
worn,  and  the  bookshelves  were  filled  with 
volumes   like   railroad    reports  and  Poor's 
Manual,  but  somehow  the  total  effect  of  the 
room  was  so  agreeable  that  the  family  used 
it  more  than  Mr.  Cord  liked. 

He  was  an  impressive  figure,  tall,  erect, 
and  with  that  suggestion  of  unbroken  health 
which  had  had  something  to  do  with  his 
success  in  life.  His  hair  must  have  been  of 
a  sandy  brown,  for  it  had  turned,  not  gray 
nor  white,  but  that  queer  no-color  that  sandy 
hair  does  turn,  melting  into  all  pale  surround 
ings.  His  long  face  was  not  vividly  colored, 
either,  but  was  stamped  with  the  immobility 
[42] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

of  expression  that  sensitive  people  in  con 
tact  with  violent  life  almost  always  acquire. 
The  result  was  that  there  seemed  to  be  some 
thing  dead  about  his  face  until  you  saw  his 
eyes,  dark  and  fierce,  as  if  all  the  fire  and 
energy  of  the  man  were  concentrated  in 
them. 

He  was  dressed  in  gray  golfing-clothes  that 
smelled  more  of  peat  than  peat  does,  and, 
though  officially  supposed  to  be  wrestling 
with  the  more  secret  part  of  correspondence 
which  even  his  own  secretary  was  not  allowed 
to  see,  he  was  actually  wiggling  a  new  golf- 
club  over  the  rug,  and  toying  with  the  ro 
mantic  idea  that  it  would  enable  him  to  drive 
farther  than  he  had  ever  driven  before. 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  door.  Mr.  Cord 
leaned  the  driver  in  a  corner,  clasped  his 
hands  behind  his  back,  straddled  his  legs  a 
trifle,  so  that  they  seemed  to  grow  out  of 
the  rug  as  the  eternal  oak  grows  out  of  the 
sod,  and  said,  "Come  in,"  in  the  tone  of  a 
man  who,  considering  the  importance  of  his 
occupation,  bears  interruption  exceedingly 
well. 

Tomes,  the  butler,  entered.     "Mr.  Verri- 
man,  sir,  to  see  you." 

[43] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"To  see  me?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

Cord  just  nodded  at  this,  which  evidently 
meant  that  the  visitor  was  to  be  admitted, 
for  Tomes  never  made  a  mistake  and  Verri- 
man  presently  entered.  Mr.  Cord  had  seen 
Eddie  Verriman  the  night  before  at  the  ball, 
and  had  thought  him  a  very  fine  figure  of  a 
man,  so  now,  putting  two  and  two  together, 
he  said  to  himself,  "Is  he  here  to  ask  my 
blessing?" 

Aloud  he  said  nothing,  but  just  nodded; 
it  was  a  belief  that  had  translated  itself 
into  a  habit — to  let  the  other  man  explain 
first. 

"I  know  I'm  interrupting  you,  Mr.  Cord," 
Verriman  began.  Mr.  Cord  made  a  lateral 
gesture  with  his  hand,  as  if  all  he  had  were 
at  the  disposal  of  his  friends,  even  his  most 
precious  asset — time. 

"It's  something  very  important,"  Eddie 
went  on.  "I'm  worried,  I  haven't  slept. 
Mr.  Cord,  have  you  checked  up  Crystal's 
economic  beliefs  lately?" 

"Lately?"  said  Mr.  Cord.  "I  don't  know 
that  I  ever  have.  Have  a  cigar?" 

Eddie  waved  the  cigar  aside  as  if  his  host 
[44] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

had  offered  it  to  him  in  the  midst  of  a  funeral 
service. 

"Well,  I  have,"  he  said,  as  if  some  one  had 
to  do  a  parent's  duty,  "and  I've  been  very 
much  distressed — shocked.  I  had  a  long 
talk  with  her  about  it  at  the  dance  last  night." 

"About  economics?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Why,  Eddie,  don't  I  seem  to  remember 
your  telling  me  you  were  in  love  with  Crys 
tal?" 

"Yes,  Mr.  Cord,  I  am." 

"Then  what  do  you  want  to  talk  economics 
for?  Or  is  it  done  like  that  nowadays?" 

"I  don't  want  to,"  answered  Eddie,  almost 
in  a  wail.  "S/ie  does.  She  gets  me  going 
and  then  we  quarrel  because  she  has  terrible 
opinions.  She  talks  wildly.  I  have  to  point 
out  to  her  that  she's  wrong.  And  last  night 
she  told  me" — Eddie  glanced  about  to  be 
sure  he  was  not  overheard — "she  told  me 
that  she  was  a  socialist." 

Mr.  Cord  had  just  lit  the  very  cigar  which 
Eddie  had  waved  away,  and  he  took  the  first 
critical  puffs  at  it  before  he  answered : 

"Did  you  ask  her  what  that  was?" 

"No— no— I  didn't." 
[451 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Missed  a  trick  there,  Eddie." 
It  was  impossible  to  accuse  so  masklike  a 
magnate  of  frivolity,  but  Eddie  was  often 
dissatisfied  with  Mr.  Cord's  reactions  to  the 
i  serious  problems  of  life. 

"But  don't  you  think  it's  terrible,"  he  went 
on,  eagerly,  "for  Crystal  to  be  a  socialist? 
In  this  age  of  the  world — civilization  trem 
bling  on  the  brink — chaos" — Eddie  made  a 
gesture  toward  the  perfectly  ordered  shelves 
containing  Poor's  Manual — "staring  us  in 
the  face?  You  say  that  the  half-baked  opin 
ions  of  an  immature  girl  make  no  difference?" 

"No,  I  shouldn't  say  that — at  least  not 
to  Crystal,"  murmured  her  father. 

"But  the  mere  fact  that  she  picks  up  such 
ideas  proves  that  they  are  in  the  air  about 
us  and  that  terrifies  me — terrifies  me,"  ended 
Eddie,  his  voice  rising  as  he  saw  that  his  host 
intended  to  remain  perfectly  calm. 

"Which  terrifies  you,  Eddie — Crystal  or 
the  revolution?" 

"The  general  discontent — the  fact  that 
civilization  is  tr — " 

"Oh  yes,  that,"  said  Mr.  Cord,  hastily. 
"Well,  I  wouldn't  allow  that  to  terrify  me, 
Eddie.     I  should  have  more  sympathy  with 
[46] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

you  if  it  had  been  Crystal.  Crystal  is  a 
good  deal  of  a  proposition,  I  grant  you. 
The  revolution  seems  to  me  simpler.  If  a 
majority  of  our  fellow  countrymen  really 
want  it,  they  are  going  to  get  it  in  spite  of 
you  and  me;  and  if  they  don't  want  it,  they 
won't  have  it  no  matter  how  Crystal  talks 
to  you  at  parties.  So  cheer  up,  Eddie,  and 
have  a  cigar." 

"They  can,  they  will,"  said  Eddie,  not 
even  troubling  to  wave  away  the  cigar  this 
time.  "You  don't  appreciate  what  an  organ 
ized  minority  of  foreign  agitators  can  do  in 
this  country.  Why,  they  can — " 

"Well,  if  a  minority  of  foreigners  can  put 
over  a  revolution  against  the  will  of  the 
American  people,  we  ought  to  shut  up  shop, 
Eddie." 

"You're  not  afraid?" 

"No." 

"You  mean  you  wouldn't  fight  it?" 

"You  bet  your  life  I'd  fight  it,"  said  Mr. 
Cord,  gayly,  "but  I  fight  lots  of  things  with 
out  being  afraid  of  them.  What's  the  use 
of  being  afraid?  Here  I  am  sixty-five, 
conservative  and  trained  to  only  one  game, 
and  yet  I  feel  as  if  I  could  manage  to  make 
[47] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

my  own  way  even  under  soviet  rule.  Any 
way,  I  don't  want  to  die  or  emigrate  just 
because  my  country  changes  its  form  of  gov 
ernment.  Only  it  would  have  to  be  the  wish 
of  the  majority,  and  I  don't  believe  it  ever 
will  be.  In  the  meantime  there  is  just  one 
thing  I  am  afraid  of — and  that's  the  thing 
that  you  and  most  of  my  friends  want  to  do 
first — suppressing  free  speech;  if  you  sup 
press  it,  we  won't  know  who  wants  what. 
Then  you  really  do  get  an  explosion." 

Eddie  had  got  Mr.  Cord  to  be  serious  now, 
with  the  unfortunate  result  that  the  older 
man  was  more  shocking  than  ever. 

"Free  speech  doesn't  mean  treason  and 
sedition,"  Eddie  began. 

"It  means  the  other  man's  opinion." 

There  was  a  pause  during  which  Eddie 
became  more  perturbed  and  Mr.  Cord  settled 
back  to  his  habitual  calm. 

"Wouldn't  you  suppress  anything?"  Ver- 
riman  asked  at  length,  willing  to  know  the 
worst.  "Not  even  such  a  vile  sheet  as 
Liberty?" 

"Do  you  ever  see  it,  Eddie?" 

"Read  a  rotten  paper  like  that?     Cer 
tainly  not.     Do  you?" 
[48] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"I  subscribe  to  it."  And,  bending  down, 
Mr.  Cord  unlocked  a  drawer  in  his  desk  and 
produced  the  issue  of  the  preceding  day. 

"I  notice  you  keep  it  locked  up,"  said 
Eddie,  and  felt  that  he  had  scored. 

"I  have  to,"  replied  Mr.  Cord,  "or  else 
Crystal  gets  hold  of  it  and  cuts  it  all  up  into 
extracts — she  must  have  sent  you  some — 
before  I  get  a  chance  to  read  it.  Besides, 
it  shocks  Tomes.  You  ought  to  talk  to 
Tomes,  Eddie.  He  thinks  about  as  you 
do—" 

At  this  moment  the  door  opened  and 
Tomes  himself  entered. 

"Mr.  Moreton  would  like  to  see  you, 
sir." 

Even  Cord's  calm  was  a  little  disturbed 
by  this  unexpected  news. 

"Mr.  Moreton!"  he  exclaimed.  "Not — 
not — not — not?" 

"No,  sir,"  said  Tomes,  always  in  posses 
sion  of  accurate  information.  "His  brother, 
I  believe." 

"Show  him  in  here,"  said  Cord,  and  added 
to  Eddie,  as  Tomes  left  the  room:    "Well, 
here  he  is — the  editor  himself,  Eddie.    You 
can  say  it  all  to  him." 
[491 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"I  don't  want  to  see  such  fellows,"  Verri- 
man  began. 

"Stay  and  protect  me,  Eddie.  He  may 
have  a  bomb  in  his  pocket." 

"You  don't  really  believe  that  he's  come 
to—" 

"No,  Eddie,  I  don't.  I  think  he's  come 
like  young  Lochinvar — to  dance  a  little  late 
at  the  wedding.  To  try  to  persuade  me  to 
accept  that  lazy,  good-looking  brother  of  his 
as  a  son-in-law.  He'll  have  quite  a  job  over 
that."  Then,  as  the  door  opened,  Mr. 
Cord's  eyes  concentrated  on  it  and  his  man 
ner  became  a  shade  sharper.  "Ah,  Mr. 
Moreton,  good  morning.  Mr.  Verriman — 
Mr.  Moreton." 

Ben  was  a  good-looking  young  man,  but 
it  was  his  expression — at  once  illuminated 
and  determined — that  made  him  unusual. 
And  the  effect  of  his  night  and  morning  had 
been  to  intensify  this,  so  that  now,  as  he 
stood  a  moment  in  the  doorway,  he  was  a 
very  attractive  and  compelling  figure. 

"I  came  to  see  my  brother,  Mr.  Cord," 

he  said,  simply,  "but  I  hear  he's  not  here 

any  more.     If  I  could  speak  to  you  alone 

for  a  few  minutes — "    He  glanced  at  Eddie, 

[50] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

whom  he  instantly  recognized  as  the  man 
who  had  not  known  how  to  talk  to  the 
woman  in  the  world  best  worth  talking  to. 

"Oh,  you  may  speak  before  Mr.  Verri- 
man,"  said  Cord.  "He  knows  the  situation 
— knows  your  brother — knows  my  children 
— knows  about  you.  In  fact,  we  were  just 
speaking  about  your  paper  when  you  came 
in.  However,  I  must  tell  you  that  Mr.  Ver- 
riman  doesn't  approve  of  Liberty.  At  least, 
I  believe  I  understood  you  right,  Eddie." 
And  Mr.  Cord,  having  thus  assured  himself 
a  few  minutes  to  regain  his  poise,  leaned 
back  comfortably  in  his  chair. 

"What's  wrong  with  the  paper,  Mr.  Ver- 
riman?"  said  Ben,  pleasantly. 

Eddie  did  not  love  the  adventure  of  men 
tal  combat,  but  he  was  no  coward.  "It 
seems  to  me,"  he  said,  "that  it  preaches  such 
radical  changes  in  our  government  that  it  is 
seditious.  To  be  frank,  Mr.  Moreton,  I 
think  the  government  ought  to  suppress  it." 

"But  we  don't  break  the  law.  The  gov 
ernment  can't  suppress  us." 

"Then  the  laws  ought  to  be  changed  so 
that  it  can." 

"That's  all  we  advocate.  Mr.  Verriman, 
[51] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

the  changing  of  the  law.  It  isn't  any  more 
seditious  for  me  to  say  it  than  for  you  to, 
is  it?" 

Of  course  in  Eddie's  opinion  it  was — 
much,  much  more  seditious.  Only  some 
how  it  was  a  difficult  point  to  make  clear, 
if  a  person  was  so  wrongheaded  he  couldn't 
see  it  for  himself.  The  point  was  that  he, 
Eddie,  was  right  in  wanting  the  laws  changed 
and  Moreton  was  wrong.  Anyone,  it 
seemed  to  Eddie,  would  agree  to  that,  unless 
he  happened  to  agree  with  Moreton  before 
hand,  and  those  were  just  the  people  who 
ought  to  be  deported,  imprisoned,  or  even 
perhaps  in  rare  instances,  as  examples,  strung 
up  to  lamp-posts.  Only  each  time  he  tried 
to  put  these  very  natural  opinions  in  words, 
they  kept  sounding  wrong  and  tyrannical 
and  narrow — qualities  which  Eddie  knew 
he  was  entirely  without.  In  order  to  coun 
teract  this  effect,  he  tried  at  first  to  speak 
very  temperately  and  calmly,  but,  unhap 
pily,  this  only  had  the  effect  of  making  him 
sound  patronizing  to  Ben's  ears. 

In  short,  it  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that 
the  discussion  would  be  amicable,  and  it  was 
not.  Each  man  began  to  be  angry  in  his 
[52] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

own  way.  Eddie  shouted  a  little,  and  Ben 
expressed  himself  with  turns  of  phrase  quite 
needlessly  insulting.  Ben  found  Verriman's 
assumption  that  the  profits  of  capital  were 
bound  up  with  patriotism,  family  life,  and 
the  Christian  religion  almost  as  irritating  as 
Verriman  found  Ben's  assumption  that  the 
government  of  labor  as  a  class  would  be 
entirely  without  the  faults  that  have  always 
marked  every  form  of  class  government. 

"And  suppose  you  got  socialism,"  said 
Eddie,  at  last,  "suppose  you  did  divide  every 
thing  up  equally,  don't  you  suppose  that  in 
a  few  years  the  clever,  strong,  industrious 
men  would  have  it  all  in  their  own  hands?" 

"Very  likely,"  said  Ben,  "but  that  would 
be  quite  a  change  from  the  present  arrange 
ment,  wouldn't  it?" 

Mr.  Cord  had  a  narrow  escape  from  laugh 
ing  out  loud,  which  would  have  cost  him  the 
friendship  of  the  man  with  whom  on  the  whole 
he  really  agreed.  He  thought  it  was  time 
to  interfere. 

"This  is  very  interesting,  Mr.  Moreton," 
he  said,  "but  I  fancy  it  wasn't  about  the 
general  radical  propaganda  that  you  came 
to  see  me." 

[53] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"No,"  said  Ben,  turning  slowly.  He  felt 
as  a  dog  feels  who  is  dragged  out  of  the  fight 
just  as  it  begins  to  get  exciting.  "No,  I  came 
to  see  you  about  this  unfortunate  engage 
ment  of  my  brother's." 

"Unfortunate?"  asked  Mr.  Cord,  without 
criticism. 

"I  should  consider  it  so,  and  I  understand 
you  do,  too." 

Cord  did  not  move  an  eyelash;  this  was 
an  absolutely  new  form  of  attack.  It  had 
certainly  never  crossed  his  mind  that  any 
objection  could  come  from  the  Moreton 
family. 

"You  consider  it  unfortunate?"  said  Eddie, 
as  if  it  would  be  mere  insolence  on  Ben's  part 
to  object  to  his  brother's  marrying  anyone. 

"Will  you  give  me  your  reasons  for  object 
ing?"  said  Cord. 

Ben  smiled.  "You  ought  to  understand 
them,"  he  said,  "for  I  imagine  they're  pretty 
much  the  same  as  your  own.  I  mean  they 
are  both  founded  on  class  consciousness.  I 
feel  that  it  will  be  destructive  to  the  things 
I  value  most  in  David  to  be  dependent  on, 
or  associated  with,  the  capitalistic  .group. 
Just  as  you  feel  it  will  be  destructive  to  your 
[54] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

daughter  to  be  married  to  a  tutor — a  fellow 
with  radical  views  and  a  seditious  brother — " 

"One  moment,  one  moment,"  said  Cord; 
4 "you've  got  this  all  wrong  so  far  as  I'm  con 
cerned.  I  do  most  emphatically  disagree 
with  the  radical  propaganda.  I  think  the 
radical  is  usually  just  a  man  who  hasn't  got 
something  he  wants." 

"And  the  conservative  is  a  man  who  wants 
to  keep  something  he's  got,"  said  Ben,  less 
hostilely  than  he  had  spoken  to  Eddie. 

"Exactly,  exactly,"  said  Cord.  "In  ideal 
ity  there  isn't  much  to  choose  between  them, 
but,  generally  speaking,  I  have  more  respect 
for  the  man  who  has  succeeded  in  getting 
something  to  preserve  than  for  the  man  who 
hasn't  got  anything  to  lose." 

"If  their  opportunities  were  equal." 

"I  say  in  general.  There  is  not  much  to 
choose  between  the  two  types;  but  there 
is  in  my  opinion  a  shade  in  favor  of  the  con 
servative  on  the  score  of  efficiency,  and  I 
am  old-fashioned  perhaps,  but  I  like  effi 
ciency.  If  it  came  to  a  fight,  I  should  fight 
on  the  conservative  side.  But  this  is  all 
beside  the  point.  My  objections  to  your 
brother,  Mr.  Moreton,  are  not  objections 
5  [55] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

to  his  group  or  class.     They  are  personal  to 
him.     Damned  personal." 

"You  don't  like  David?" 

"Why,  he's  an  attractive  young  fellow, 
but,  if  you'll  forgive  my  saying  so,  Mr. 
Moreton,  I  don't  think  he's  any  good.  He's 
weak,  he's  idle,  he  entirely  lacks  that  aggres 
sive  will  that — whether  we  have  your  revo 
lution  or  not — is  the  only  bulwark  a  woman 
has  in  this  world.  Why,  Mr.  Moreton,  you 
are  evidently  a  very  much  more  advanced 
and  dangerous  radical  than  your  brother, 
but  I  should  not  have  half  the  objection  to 
you  that  I  have  to  him.  There  is  only  one 
thing  that  makes  a  difference  in  this  world 
— character.  Your  brother  hasn't  got  it." 

For  an  instant  the  perfect  accuracy  of 
Cord's  statements  about  David  left  Ben 
silent.  Then  he  pulled  himself  together  and 
said,  with  a  firmness  he  did  not  wholly  feel : 

"You  hardly  do  David  justice.  He  may 
not  have  great  force,  but  he  has  talent,  great 
sweetness,  no  vices — " 

"Oh,  quite,  quite,  quite,  quite,"  said  Cord, 
with  a  gesture  of  his  long  hand  that  should 
somehow  have   recalled  to  Ben  the  motion 
of  a  hand  he  had  recently  kissed. 
[561 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"However,"  said  Ben,  "there  is  no  use  in 
arguing  about  our  differences.  The  point 
is  we  are  agreed  that  this  marriage  ought 
not  to  be.  Let  us  co-operate  on  that.  Where 
could  I  find  David?  I  believe  if  I  could  see 
him  I'd  have  some  effect  on  him." 

"You  mean  you  could  talk  him  out  of 
marrying  the  girl  he  loves?" 

"I  might  make  him  see  the  folly  of  it." 

"Well,  I  haven't  said  anything  as  bad 
about  your  brother  as  that,  Mr.  Moreton. 
But  you  do  him  injustice.  You  couldn't 
talk  him  out  of  it,  and  if  you  could,  she'd 
talk  him  right  back  into  it  again.  But  there 
is  one  thing  to  consider.  I  understand  you 
make  him  an  allowance.  How  about  stop 
ping  that?" 

"I  wouldn't  consider  that  for  a  moment," 
said  Ben,  with  more  temper  than  he  had  so 
far  shown.  "I  don't  make  him  that  allow 
ance  so  that  I  can  force  him  to  do  what  I 
think  best.  I  give  it  to  him  because  he  needs 
it.  I  don't  believe  in  force,  Mr.  Cord." 

"Oh  yes,  you  do,  Mr.  Moreton." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"You  were  proposing  to  use  a  much  more 
pernicious  kind  of  force  when  you  proposed 
[57] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

talking  the  boy  out  of  his  first  love.  How 
ever,  to  be  candid  with  you,  I  must  tell  you 
that  the  issue  is  dead.  They  ran  off  yester 
day  and  were  married  in  Boston." 

There  was  a  short  silence  and  then  Ben 
moved  toward  the  door. 

" Won't  you  stay  to  lunch?"  said  Mr. 
Cord,  politely. 

"Thank  you,  no,"  said  Ben.  He  wanted 
to  be  alone.  Like  all  dominating  people 
who  don't  get  their  own  way  in  an  altruistic 
issue,  his  feelings  were  deeply  wounded.  He 
took  his  hat  from  the  disapproving  Tomes, 
and  went  out  to  the  sea  to  think.  He  sup 
posed  he  was  going  to  think  about  David's 
future  and  the  terrible  blow  his  paper  had 
just  received. 

As  the  door  closed  behind  him,  Eddie 
turned  to  Mr.  Cord  with  a  world  of  reproach 
in  his  eyes. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "I  must  say,  sir,  I  think 
you  were  unnecessarily  gentle  with  that 
fellow." 

"Seemed  to  me  a  fine  young  fellow,"  said 
Mr.  Cord. 

"Asking  him  to  lunch,"  said  Eddie. 

"I  did  that  for  Crystal,"  replied  Cord, 
[58] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

getting  up  and  slapping  his  pockets — a  ges 
ture  which  in  some  subconscious  way  he 
hoped  would  make  Eddie  go  home.  "She's 
always  so  keen  to  meet  new  people.  If  she 
heard  that  the  editor  of  Liberty  had  been 
here  while  she  was  asleep  and  that  I  had  not 
tried  to  keep  him  for  her  to  see — whew! — 
she  would  make  a  scene." 

"But  she  oughtn't  to  see  people  like  that," 
protested  Eddie,  as  if  he  were  trying  to  talk 
sense  in  a  madhouse.  "That  was  what  I 
was  just  explaining  to  you,  Mr  Cord,  when — " 

"So  you  were,  Eddie,  so  you  were,"  said 
Mr.  Cord.  "Stay  to  lunch  and  tell  Crystal. 
Or,  rather,"  he  added,  hastily  glancing  at 
the  clock,  "come  back  to  lunch  in  an  hour. 
I  have  to  go  now  and  see — "  Mr.  Cord  hes 
itated  for  the  fraction  of  a  second — "the 
gardener.  If  you  don't  see  gardeners  now 
and  then  and  let  them  scold  you  about  the 
weather  and  the  Lord's  arrangement  of  the 
seasons,  they  go  mad  and  beat  their  wives. 
See  you  later,  Eddie,"  and  Mr.  Cord  stepped 
out  through  the  French  window.  It  was 
only  great  crises  like  these  that  led  him  to 
offer  himself  up  to  the  attacks  of  his  em 
ployees. 

f59l 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

A  severe  elderly  man  with  a  long,  flat 
upper  lip  and  side  whiskers  immediately 
sprang  apparently  from  the  earth  and  ap 
proached  him.  He  had  exactly  the  manner 
of  resolute  gloom  that  a  small  boy  has  when 
something  has  gone  wrong  at  school  and  he 
wants  his  mother  to  drag  it  out  of  him. 

"Good  morning,  sir,"  he  said. 

"Morning,  McKellar,"  said  Cord,  gayly. 
"Everything's  all  right,  I  suppose." 

McKellar  shook  his  head.  Everything 
was  about  as  far  from  all  right  as  it  well 
could  be.  The  cook  was  a  violent  maniac 
who  required  peas  to  be  picked  so  young  that 
they  weren't  worth  the  picking.  Tomes  and 
his  footman  were  a  band  of  malicious  pirates 
who  took  pleasure  in  cutting  for  the  table 
the  very  buds  which  McKellar  was  cherish 
ing  for  the  horticultural  show.  And  as  for 
the  season — McKellar  could  not  remember 
such  a  devastatingly  dry  August  since  he 
was  a  lad  at  home. 

"Why,  McKellar,  we  had  rain  two  days 
ago." 

"You  wouldn't  call  that  little  mist  rain, 


sir." 


'And  last  week  a  perfect  downpour." 
[60] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Ah,  that's  the  kind  doesn't  sink  into  the 
soil."  Looking  up  critically  at  the  heavens, 
McKellar  expressed  his  settled  conviction 
that  in  two  weeks'  time  hardly  a  blade  or  a 
shrub  would  be  alive  in  the  island  at  Newport. 

"Well,  that  will  save  us  all  a  lot  of  trouble, 
McKellar,"  said  Mr.  Cord,  and  presently 
left  his  gloomy  gardener.  He  had  attained 
his  object.  When  he  went  back  into  the 
house,  Eddie  had  gone,  and  he  could  go  back 
to  his  new  driver  in  peace. 

He  was  not  interrupted  until  ten  minutes 
past  one,  when  Crystal  came  into  the  room, 
her  eyes  shining  with  exactly  the  same  color 
that,  beyond  the  lawn,  the  sea  was  displaying. 
Unlike  Eddie,  she  looked  better  than  in  her 
fancy  dress.  She  had  on  flat  tennis  shoes, 
a  cotton  blouse  and  a  duck  skirt,  and  a  russet- 
colored  sweater.  Miss  Cox  would  have 
rejected  every  item  of  her  costume  except 
the  row  of  pearls,  which  just  showed  at  her 
throat. 

She  kissed  her  father  rapidly,  and  said: 

"Good  morning,  dear.  Are  you  ready  for 
breakfast — lunch  I  mean?" 

She  was  a  little  bit  flustered  for  the  reason 
that  it  seemed  to  her  as  if  any  one  would  be 
[61] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

able  to  see  that  she  was  an  entirely  different 
Crystal  from  the  one  of  the  evening  before, 
and  she  was  not  quite  sure  what  she  was 
going  to  answer  when  her  father  said,  as 
she  felt  certain  he  must  say  at  any  moment, 
"My  dear  child,  what  has  come  over  you?" 

He  did  not  say  this,  however.  He  held 
out  his  golf -club  and  said,  "Got  anew  driver." 

"Yes,  yes,  dear,  very  nice,"  said  Crystal. 
"But  I  want  to  have  lunch  punctually,  to 
day." 

Mr.  Cord  signed.  Crystal  wasn't  always 
very  sympathetic.  "I'm  ready,"  he  said, 
"only  Eddie's  coming." 

"Eddie!"  exclaimed  Crystal,  drawing  her 
shoulders  up,  as  if  at  the  sight  of  a  cobra  in 
her  path.  "Why  is  Eddie  coming  to  lunch? 
I  did  not  ask  him." 

"No,  my  dear,  I  took  that  liberty,"  replied 
her  father.  "It  seemed  the  only  way  of 
getting  rid  of  him." 

"Well,  I  sha'n't  wait  for  him,"  said  Crystal, 
ringing  the  bell.  "I  have  an  engagement 
at  a  quarter  past  two." 

"At  the  golf  club?"  asked  her  father,  his 
eye  lighting  a  little.  "You  might  drive  me 
out,  you  know." 

[62] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"No,  dear;  quite  in  the  other  direction — 
with  a  man  who  was  at  the  party  last  night." 

"You  enjoyed  the  party?" 

"No,  not  a  bit." 

"But  you  stayed  till  morning." 

"I  stopped  and  took  a  swim." 

"You  enjoyed  that,  I  suppose?" 

His  daughter  glanced  at  him  and  turned 
crimson ;  but  she  did  not  have  to  answer,  for 
at  that  moment  Tomes  came,  in  response 
to  her  ring,  and  she  said : 

"We  won't  wait  lunch  for  Mr.  Verriman, 
Tomes."  Then,  as  he  went  away,  she  asked, 
"And  what  was  Eddie  doing  here  this  morn 
ing,  anyhow?" 

"He  was  scolding  me,"  replied  Mr.  Cord. 
"Have  you  noticed,  Crystal,  what  a  lot  of 
scolding  is  going  on  in  the  world  at  present? 
I  believe  that  that  is  why  no  one  is  getting 
any  work  done — everyone  is  so  busy  scolding 
everybody  else.  The  politicians  are  scold 
ing,  and  the  newspapers  are  scolding,  and 
most  of  the  fellows  I  know  are  scolding.  I 
believe  I've  got  hold  of  a  great  truth — " 

"And  may  I  ask  what  Eddie  was  scolding 
about?"  asked  Crystal,  no  more  interested 
in  great  truths  than  most  of  us. 
[63] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"About  you." 

Crystal  moved  her  head  about  as  if  things 
had  now  reached  a  point  where  it  wasn't 
even  worth  while  to  be  angry.  "About  me?" 

"It  seems  you're  a  socialist,  my  dear. 
Eddie  asked  me  how  long  it  was  since  I  had 
taken  an  inventory  of  your  economic  beliefs. 
I  could  not  remember  that  I  ever  had,  but 
perhaps  you  will  tell  them  to  me  now.  That 
is,"  Mr.  Cord  added,  "if  you  can  do  it  with 
out  scolding  me — probably  an  impossible 
condition  to  impose  nowadays." 

"It's  a  pity  about  Eddie,"  said  Crystal, 
fiercely.  "If  only  stupid  people  would  be 
content  to  be  stupid,  instead  of  trying  to 
run  the  world — " 

"Ah,  my  dear,  it's  only  stupid  people  who 
are  under  the  impression  that  they  can. 
Good  morning  again,  Eddie,  we  were  just 
speaking  of  you." 

Mr.  Cord  added  the  last  sentence  without 
the  slightest  change  of  tone  or  expression 
as  his  guest  was  ushered  in  by  Tomes,  who, 
catching  Crystal's  eyes  for  a  more  important 
fact  than  Eddie's  arrival,  murmured  that 
luncheon  was  served. 

"Well,  Eddie,"  said  Crystal,  and  there 
[64] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

was  a  sort  of  gay  vibration  in  her  whole 
figure,  and  her  tone  was  like  a  bright  banner 
of  war,  "and  so  you  came  round  to  complain 
to  my  father,  did  you?'* 

Mr.  Cord  laid  his  hand  on  her  shoulder. 
"Do  you  think  you  could  demolish  Eddie 
just  as  well  at  table,  my  dear?"  he  said. 
"If  so,  there's  no  use  in  letting  the  food  get 
cold." 

"Oh,  she  can  do  it  anywhere,*'  replied 
Eddie,  bitterly,  and  then,  striking  his  habit 
ual  note  of  warning,  he  went  on,  "but,  hon 
estly,  Crystal,  if  you  had  heard  what  your 
father  and  I  heard  this  morning — " 

"I  had  a  visit  from  David's  brother  this 
morning,"  put  in  Mr.  Cord,  "the  editor  of 
your  favorite  morning  paper." 

"Ben  Moreton,  here!  Oh,  father,  why 
didn't  you  call  me?  Yes,  I  know,'*  she 
added,  as  her  father  opened  his  mouth  to 
say  that  she  had  left  most  particular  instruc 
tions  that  she  was  to  be  allowed  to  sleep  as 
late  as  she  could,  "I  know,  but  you  must 
have  known  I  should  have  wanted  to  look 
David's  brother  over.  Has  he  long  hair? 
Does  he  wear  a  soft  tie?  Did  you  hate 
him?" 

[65] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Eddie  didn't  take  much  of  a  fancy  to 
him." 

"I  should  say  not.  A  damned,  hollow- 
eyed  fanatic." 

"Is  he  as  good-looking  as  David,  father? 
What  does  he  look  like?" 

Mr.  Cord  hesitated.  "Well,  a  little  like 
my  engraving  of  Thomas  Jefferson  as  a 
young  man." 

"He  looks  as  if  he  might  have  a  bomb  in 
his  pocket." 

"Oh,  Eddie,  do  keep  quiet,  there's  a  dear, 
and  let  father  give  me  one  of  his  long,  won 
derful  accounts.  Go  ahead,  father." 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Cord,  helping  himself 
from  a  dish  that  Tomes  was  presenting  to 
him,  "as  I  told  you,  Eddie  had  dropped  in 
very  kindly  to  scold  me  about  you,  when 
Tomes  announced  Mr.  Moreton.  Tomes 
thought  he  ought  to  be  put  straight  out  of 
the  house.  Didn't  you,  Tomes?" 

"No,  sir,"  said  Tomes,  who  was  getting 
used  to  his  employer,  although  he  did  not 
encourage  this  sort  of  thing,  particularly 
before  the  footmen. 

"Well,  Moreton  came  in  and  said,  very 
simply — " 

[66] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Has  he  good  manners,  father?" 

"He  has  no  manners  at  all,"  roared  Eddie. 

"Oh,  how  nice,"  said  Crystal,  of  whom 
it  might  be  asserted  without  flattery  that 
she  now  understood  in  perfection  the  art  of 
irritating  Eddie. 

"He  is  very  direct  and  natural,"  her  father 
continued.  "He  has  a  lot  more  punch  than 
your  brother-in-law,  my  dear.  In  fact,  I 
was  rather  impressed  with  the  young  fellow 
until  he  and  Eddie  fell  to  quarreling.  Things 
did  not  go  so  well,  then." 

"You  mean,"  said  Crystal,  the  gossip 
rather  getting  the  best  of  the  reformer  in 
her,  "that  he  lost  his  temper  horribly?" 

"I  should  say  he  did,"  said  Eddie. 

"Well,  Eddie,  you  know  you  were  not  per 
fectly  calm,"  answered  Cord.  "Let  us  say 
that  they  both  lost  their  tempers,  which  is 
strange,  for  as  far  as  I  could  see  they  were 
agreed  on  many  essentials.  They  both  be 
lieve  that  one  class  in  the  community  ought 
to  govern  the  other.  They  both  believe  the 
world  is  in  a  very  bad  way;  only,  according 
to  Eddie,  we  are  going  to  have  chaos  if  capital 
loses  its  control  of  the  situation;  and  accord 
ing  to  Moreton  we  are  going  to  have  chaos 
[67] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

if  labor  doesn't  get  control.  So,  as  one  or 
the  other  seems  bound  to  happen,  we  ought 
to  be  able  to  adjust  ourselves  to  chaos.  In 
fact,  Crystal,  I  have  been  interviewing 
McKellar  about  having  a  chaos  cellar  built 
in  the  garden. 

Eddie  pushed  back  his  plate,  it  was  empty, 
but  the  gesture  suggested  that  he  could  not 
go  on  choking  down  the  food  of  a  man  who 
joked  about  such  serious  matters. 

"I  must  say,  Mr.  Cord,"  he  began,  "I 
really  must  say — "  He  paused,  surprised 
to  find  that  he  really  hadn't  anything  that 
he  must  say,  and  Crystal  turned  to  her 
father: 

"But  you  haven't  told  me  why  he  came. 
To  see  Eugenia,  I  suppose?" 

"No;  he  hadn't  heard  of  the  marriage. 
He  came  to  talk  to  his  brother." 

"For  you  must  know,"  put  in  Eddie, 
hastily,  "that  Mr.  Ben  Moreton  does  not 
approve  of  the  marriage — oh,  dear,  no.  He 
would  consider  such  a  connection  quite 
beneath  his  family.  He  disapproves  of 
Eugenia  as  a  sister-in-law." 

"How  could  any  one  disapprove  of  her?" 
asked  her  sister,  hotly. 
[68] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"Jevver  hear  such  nerve?"  said  Eddie. 

"It's  not  Eugenia;  it's  capital  Moreton 
disapproves  of,"  Mr.  Cord  went  on,  patiently 
explaining.  "You  see  it  never  crossed  our 
minds  that  the  Moretons  might  object,  but 
of  course  they  do.  They  regard  us  as  a  very 
degrading  connection.  Doubtless  it  will  hurt 
Ben  Moreton  with  his  readers  to  be  connected 
with  a  financial  pirate  like  myself,  quite  as 
much  as  it  will  hurt  me  in  the  eyes  of  most 
of  my  fellow  board  members  when  it  becomes 
known  that  my  son-in-law's  brother  is  the 
editor  of  Liberty" 

"The  Moretons  disapprove,"  repeated 
Crystal,  to  whom  the  idea  was  not  at  all 
agreeable. 

"Disapprove,  nonsense!"  said  Eddie.  "I 
believe  he  came  to  blackmail  you.  To  see 
what  he  could  get  out  of  you  if  he  offered 
to  stop  the  marriage.  Well,  why  not?  If 
these  fellows  believe  all  the  money  ought 
to  be  taken  away  from  the  capitalists,  why 
should  they  care  how  it's  done?  I  can't 
see  much  difference  between  robbing  a  man, 
and  legislating  his  fortune  out  of — " 

"Well,  I  must  tell  you,  father  dear,"  said 
Crystal,  exactly  as  if  Eddie  had  not  been 
[69] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

speaking,  "that  I  think  it  was  horrid  of  you 
not  to  have  me  called  when  you  must  have 
known — " 

"Crystal,  you're  scolding  me,"  wailed  her 
father.  "And  most  unjustly.  I  did  ask 
him  to  lunch  just  for  your  sake,  although  I 
saw  Eddie  was  shocked,  and  I  was  afraid 
Tomes  would  give  warning.  But  I  did  ask 
him,  only  he  wouldn't  stay." 

Crystal  rose  fron  the  table  with  her  eye 
on  the  clock,  and  they  began  to  make  their 
way  back  to  Mr.  Cord's  study,  as  she  asked: 

"Why  wouldn't  he  stay?" 

"I  gathered  because  he  didn't  want  to. 
Perhaps  he  was  afraid  he'd  have  to  argue 
with  Eddie  about  capital  and  labor  all 
through  lunch.  And  of  course  he  did  not 
know  that  I  had  another  beautiful  daughter 
sleeping  off  the  effects  of  a  late  party,  or 
very  likely  he  would  have  accepted." 

Very  likely  he  would. 

Just  as  they  entered  the  study,  the  tele 
phone  rang.  Crystal  sprang  to  the  instru 
ment,  brushing  away  her  father's  hand, 
which  had  moved  toward  it. 

"It's  for  me,  dear,"  she  said,  and  con 
tinued,  speaking  into  the  mouthpiece:  "Yes, 
[70] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

it's  I."  (A  pause.)  "Where  are  you?  .  .  . 
Oh,  yes,  I  know  the  place.  I'll  be  there  in 
five  minutes,  in  a  little  blue  car."  She  hung 
up  the  receiver,  sprang  up,  and  looked  very 
much  surprised  to  see  Eddie  and  her  father 
still  there  just  as  before.  "Good-by,  Eddie," 
she  said,  "I'm  sorry,  but  I  have  an  engage 
ment.  Good-by,  father." 

"You  don't  want  to  run  me  out  to  the 
golf  club  first?" 

"Not  possible,  dear.  The  chauffeur  can 
take  you  in  the  big  car." 

"Yes,  but  he'll  scold  me  all  the  way  about 
there  not  being  room  enough  in  the  garage." 

Crystal  was  firm.  "I'm  sorry,  but  I  can't, 
dear.  This  is  important.  I  may  take  a 
job.  I'll  tell  you  all  about  it  this  evening." 
And  she  left  the  room,  with  a  smile  that  kept 
getting  entirely  beyond  her  control 

"What's  this?  What's  this?"  cried  Eddie 
as  the  door  shut.  "A  job.  You  wouldn't 
let  Crystal  take  a  job,  would  you,  Mr.  Cord?" 

"I  haven't  been  consulted,"  said  Mr.  Cord, 
taking  out  his  new  driver  again. 

"But  didn't  you  notice  how  excited  she 
was.  I'm  sure  it's  decided." 

"Yes,  I  noticed,  Eddie;  but  it  looked  to 
6  [71] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

me  more  like  a  man  than  a  job.  How  do 
you  think  we'd  come  out  if  I  gave  you  a 
stroke  and  a  half  a  hole?" 

Eddie  was  too  perturbed  even  to  answer. 

In  the  meantime,  Crystal  was  spinning 
along  Bellevue  Avenue,  forgetting  to  bow 
to  her  friends,  and  wondering  why  the  car 
was  going  so  badly  until,  her  eye  falling  on 
the  speedometer,  she  noticed  that  she  was 
doing  a  mild  thirty-five  miles  an  hour. 
Sooner,  therefore,  than  the  law  allowed, 
she  reached  a  small  park  that  surrounds 
a  statue  of  Perry,  and  there  she  picked  up 
a  passenger. 

Ben  got  in  and  shut  the  little  door  almost 
before  she  brought  the  car  to  a  standstill. 

"When  you  were  little,"  he  said,  "did  you 
ever  imagine  something  wonderful  that  might 
happen — like  the  door's  opening  and  a  dele 
gation  coming  to  elect  you  captain  of  the 
baseball  team,  or  whatever  is  a  little  girl's 
equivalent  of  that — and  keep  on  imagining 
it  and  imagining  it,  until  it  seemed  as  if  it 
really  were  going  to  happen?  Well,  I  have 
been  standing  here  saying  to  myself,  Wouldn't 
it  be  wonderful  if  Crystal  should  come  in  a 
little  blue  car  and  take  me  to  drive?  And, 

[72] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

by  Heaven!  you'll  never  believe  me,  but  she 
actually  did." 

"Tell  me  everything  you've  done  since  I 
saw  you,"  she  answered. 

"I  haven't  done  anything  but  think  about 
you.  Oh  yes,  I  have,  too.  I've  reappraised 
the  universe.  You  see,  you've  just  made 
me  a  present  of  a  brand-new  world,  and  I've 
been  pretty  busy,  I  can  tell  you,  untying  the 
string  and  unwrapping  the  paper,  and  bless 
me,  Crystal,  it  looks  like  a  mighty  fine  pres 
ent  so  far." 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "I  think  you  talk  charm 
ingly."  She  had  started  to  say,  "you  make 
love  charmingly,"  but  on  second  thoughts 
decided  that  the  overt  statement  had  better 
come  from  him.  "Dear  me,"  she  went  on, 
"we  have  so  much  to  talk  about.  There's 
my  job.  Can't  we  talk  a  little  about  that?" 

They  could  and  did.  Their  talk  consisted 
largely  in  his  telling  her  how  much  richer  a 
service  she  could  render  his  paper  through 
having  been  unconsciously  steeped  in  beauty 
than  if  she  had  been  merely  intellectually 
instructed — than  if,  as  she  more  simply  put 
it,  she  had  known  something.  And  as  he 
talked,  her  mind  began  to  expand  in  the 
[73] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

warm  atmosphere  of  his  praise  and  to  give 
off  its  perfume  like  a  flower. 

But  the  idea  of  her  working  with  him  day 
after  day,  helping  the  development  of  the 
paper  which  had  grown  as  dear  as  a  child 
to  him,  was  so  desirable  that  he  did  not  dare 
to  contemplate  it  unless  it  promised  realiza 
tion. 

"Oh,"  he  broke  out,  "you  won't  really  do 
it.  Your  family  will  object,  or  something. 
Probably  when  I  go  away  to-night,  I  shall 
never  see  you  again." 

"You  are  still  going  away  to-night?" 

"I  must." 

She  looked  at  him  and  slowly  shook  her 
head,  as  a  mother  shakes  her  head  at  the 
foolish  plans  of  a  child. 

"I  thought  I  was  going,"  he  said,  weakly. 

"Why?" 

He  groaned,  but  did  not  answer. 

She  thought,  "Oh,  dear,  I  wish  when  men 
want  to  be  comforted  they  would  not  make 
a  girl  spend  so  much  time  and  energy  getting 
them  to  say  that  they  do  want  it."  Aloud 
she  said: 

"You  must  tell  me  what's  the  matter." 

^"It's  a  long  story." 

[74] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"We  have  all  afternoon." 

"That's  it — we  haven't  all  eternity." 

"Oh,  eternity,"  said  Crystal,  dismissing 
it  with  the  Cord  wave  of  the  hand.  "Who 
wants  eternity?  'Since  we  must  die  how 
bright  the  starry  track,'  you  know." 

"No;  what  is  that?"/ 

"I  don't  remember." 

"Oh." 

After  this  meeting  of  minds  they  drove 
for  some  time  in  silence.  Ben  was  seeing  a 
new  aspect  of  Newport — bare,  rugged  coun 
try,  sandy  roads,  a  sudden  high  rock  jutting 
out  toward  the  sea,  a  rock  on  which  tradition 
asserts  that  Bishop  Berkeley  once  sat  and 
considered  the  illusion  of  matter.  They 
stopped  at  length  at  the  edge  of  a  sandy 
beach.  Crystal  parked  her  car  neatly  with 
a  sharp  turn  of  the  wheel,  and  got  out. 

"There's  a  tea  basket,"  she  called  over 
her  shoulder. 

Ben's  heart  bounded  at  the  news — not 
that  he  was  hungry,  but  as  the  hour  was 
now  but  little  past  half  after  two  a  tea  basket 
indicated  a  prolonged  interview.  He  found 
it  tucked  away  in  the  back  of  the  car,  and 
followed  her.  They  sat  down  at  the  edge 
[75] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

of  the  foam.  He  lit  a  pipe,  clasped  his 
hands  about  his  knees  and  stared  out  to  sea ; 
she  curled  her  feet  backward,  grasped  an 
ankle  in  her  hand,  and,  looking  at  him,  said : 

"Now  what  makes  you  groan  so?" 

"I  haven't  meant  to  be  dishonest,"  he 
said,  "but  I  have  been  obtaining  your  friend 
ship — trying  to — under  false  pretenses." 

"Trying  to?"  said  Crystal.  "Now  isn't 
it  silly  to  put  that  in." 

He  turned  and  smiled  at  her.  She  was 
really  incredibly  sweet.  "But,  all  the  same," 
he  went  on,  "there  is  a  barrier,  a  real,  tangi 
ble  barrier  between  us." 

Crystal's  heart  suffered  a  chill  convul 
sion  at  these1,  words.  "Good  gracious!" 
she  thought.  "He's  entangled  with  another 
woman — oh  dear! — marriage — "  But  she 
did  not  interrupt  him,  and  he  continued: 

"I  let  you  think  that  I  was  one  of  the  men 
you  might  have  known — that  I  was  asked 
to  your  party  last  night,  whereas,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  only  watched  you — " 

Crystal's  mind,  working  with  its  normal 
rapidity,  invented,  faced,  and  passed  over 
the  fact  that  he  must  have  been  one  of  the 
musicians.  _  She  said  aloud: 
[76] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"I  think  I  ought  to  tell  you  that  I'm  not 
much  of  a  believer  in  barriers — between 
sensible  people  who  want  friendship." 

"Friendship!"  exclaimed  Ben,  as  if  that 
were  the  last  thing  he  had  come  out  on  a 
lovely  summer  afternoon  to  discuss. 

"There  aren't  any  real  barriers  any  more," 
Crystal  continued.  "Differences  of  posi 
tion,  and  religion,  and  all  those  things  don't 
seem  to  matter  now.  Romeo  and  Juliet 
wouldn't  have  paid  any  attention  to  the 
little  family  disagreement  if  they  had  lived 
to-day." 

"In  the  case  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  if  I 
remember  correctly,"  said  Ben,  "it  was  not 
exactly  a  question  of  friendship." 

She  colored  deeply,  but  he  refused  to 
modify  his  statement,  for,  after  all,  it  was 
correct.  "But  difference  of  opinion  is  an 
obstacle,"  he  went  on.  "I  have  seen  hus 
bands  and  wives  parted  by  differences  of 
opinion  in  the  late  war.  And  as  far  as 
I'm  concerned  there's  a  war  on  now — a 
different  war,  and  I  came  here  to  try  to 
prevent  my  brother  marrying  into  an  enemy 
influence — " 

"Good  Heavens!"   cried  Crystal.    "You 
[77] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

are  Ben  Moreton !  Why  didn't  I  see  it  sooner? 
I'm  Crystal  Cord,"  and,  lifting  up  her  chin, 
she  laughed. 

That  she  could  laugh  as  the  gulf  opened 
between  them  seemed  to  him  terrible.  He 
turned  his  head  away. 

She  stopped  laughing.  "You  don't  think 
it's  amusing?"  (He  shook  his  head.)  "That 
we're  relations-in-law,  when  we  thought  it 
was  all  so  unknown  and  romantic?  No 
wonder  I  felt  at  home  with  you,  when  I've 
read  so  many  of  your  letters  to  David — 
such  nice  letters,  too — and  I  subscribe  to 
your  paper,  and  read  every  word  of  the 
editorials.  And  to  think  that  you  would 
not  lunch  with  me  to-day,  when  my  father 
asked  you." 

"To  think  that  it  was  you  I  was  being 
asked  to  lunch  with,  and  didn't  know  it!" 

"Well,  you  dine  with  us  to-morrow,"  she 
answered,  stating  a  simple  fact. 

"Crystal,"  he  said,  and  put  his  hand  on 
hers  as  if  this  would  help  him  through  his 
long  explanation;  but  the  continuity  of  his 
thought  was  destroyed  and  his  spirit  wounded 
by  her  immediately  withdrawing  it ;  and 
then — so  exactly  does  the  spring  of  love 
[78] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

resemble  the  uncertain  glory  of  an  April  day 
— he  was  rendered  perfectly  happy  again  by 
perceiving  that  her  action  was  due  to  the 
publicity  of  their  position  and  not  to  repug 
nance  to  the  caress. 

Fortunately  he  was  a  man  not  without 
invention,  and  so  when  a  few  minutes  later 
she  suggested  opening  the  tea  basket,  he 
insisted  on  moving  to  a  more  retired  spot 
on  the  plea  that  the  teakettle  would  burn 
better  out  of  the  wind;  and  Crystal,  who 
must  have  known  that  Tomes  never  gave 
her  a  teakettle,  but  made  the  tea  at  home 
and  put  it  in  a  thermos  bottle,  at  once  agreed 
to  the  suggestion. 

They  moved  back  across  the  road,  where 
irregular  rocks  sheltered  small  plots  of  grass 
and  wild  flowers,  and  here,  instead  of  an 
Arcadian  duet,  they  had,  most  unsuitably, 
their  first  quarrel. 

It  began  as  quarrels  are  so  apt  to  do,  by 
a  complete  agreement.  Of  course  he  would 
stay  over  the  next  day,  which  was  Sunday, 
and  not  very  busy  in  the  office  of  Liberty. 
In  return  he  expected  her  undivided  atten 
tion.  She  at  once  admitted  that  this  was 
part  of  the  plan — only  there  would  have  to 
[79] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

be  one  little  exception;  she  was  dining  out 
this  evening.  Oh,  well,  that  could  be 
broken,  couldn't  it?  She  would  like  to 
break  it,  but  it  happened  to  be  one  of  those 
engagements  that  had  to  be  kept.  Ben 
could  not  understand  that. 

At  first  she  tried  to  explain  it  to  him:  She 
had  chosen  her  own  evening  several  weeks 
ago  with  these  people,  who  wanted  her  to 
meet  a  friend  of  theirs  who  was  motoring 
down  specially  from  Boston.  She  felt  she 
must  keep  her  word. 

"I  assure  you  I  don't  want  to,  but  you 
understand,  don't  you?" 

If  she  had  looked  at  his  face  she  would 
not  have  asked  the  last  question.  He  did 
not  understand;  indeed,  he  had  resolved 
not  to. 

"No,"  he  said,  ''I  must  own,  I  don't.  If 
you  told  me  that  you  wanted  to  go,  that 
would  be  one  thing.  I  shouldn't  have  a 
word  to  say  then." 

"Oh  yes,  you  would,  Ben,"  said  Crystal, 
but  he  did  not  notice  her. 

"I  can't  understand  your  allowing  your 
self  to  be  dragged  there  against  your  will. 
You  say  you  despise  this  life,  but  you  seem 
[80] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

to  take  it  pretty  seriously  if  you  can't  break 
any  engagement  that  you  may  make." 

"How  absurd  you  are!  Of  course  I  often 
break  engagements." 

"I  see.  You  do  when  the  inducement  is 
sufficient.  Well,  that  makes  it  all  perfectly 
clear." 

She  felt  both  angry  and  inclined  to  cry. 
She  knew  that  to  yield  to  either  impulse 
would  instantly  solve  the  problem  and  bring 
a  very  unreasonable  young  man  to  reason. 
She  ran  over  both  scenes  in  her  imagination. 
Registering  anger,  she  would  rise  and  say 
that,  really,  Mr.  Moreton,  if  he  would  not 
listen  to  her  explanation  there  was  no  use 
in  prolonging  the  discussion.  That  would 
be  the  critical  moment.  He  would  take  her 
in  his  arms  then  and  there,  or  else  he  would 
let  her  go,  and  they  would  drive  in  silence, 
and  part  at  the  little  park,  where  of  course 
she  might  say,  "Aren't  you  silly  to  leave  me 
like  this?" — only  her  experience  was  that 
it  was  never  very  practical  to  make  up  with 
an  angry  man  in  public. 

To  burst  into  tears  was  a  safer  method, 
but  she  had  a  natural  repugnance  to  crying, 
and  perhaps  she  was  subconsciously  aware 
[81] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

that  she  might  be  left,  after  the  quarrel  was 
apparently  made  up  by  this  method,  with 
a  slight  resentment  against  the  man  who 
had  forced  her  to  adopt  so  illogical  a  line  of 
conduct. 

A  middle  course  appealed  to  her.  She 
laid  her  hand  on  Ben's.  A  few  minutes 
before  it  would  have  seemefd  unbelievable 
to  Ben  that  his  own  hand  would  have  re 
mained  cold  and  lifeless  under  that  touch, 
but  such  was  now  the  case. 

"Ben,"  she  said,  "if  you  go  on  being  dis 
agreeable  a  second  longer  you  must  make 
up  your  mind  how  you  will  behave  when  I 
burst  into  tears." 

"How  I  should  behave?" 

She  nodded. 

His  hands  clasped  hers.  He  told  her  how 
he  should  behave.  He  even  offered  to  show 
her,  without  putting  her  to  the  trouble  of 
tears. 

"You  mean,"  she  said,  "that  you  would 
forgive  me?  Well,  forgive  me,  anyhow.  I'm 
doing  what  I  think  is  right  about  this  old 
dinner.  Perhaps  I'm  wrong  about  it;  per 
haps  you're  mistaken  and  I'm  not  absolutely 
perfect,  but  if  I  were,  think  what  a  lot  of 
[82] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

fun  you  would  miss  in  changing  me.    And 
you  know  I  never  meant  to  abandon  you  for 
the  whole  evening.     I'll  get  away  at  half 
past  nine  and  we'll  take  a  little  turn." 
So  that  was  settled. 


CHAPTER  III 

A!  they  drove  back  she  revealed  another 
plan  to  him — she  was  taking  him  for 
a  moment  to  see  a  friend  of  hers.  He  pro 
tested.  He  did  not  want  to  see  anyone  but 
herself,  but  Crystal  was  firm.  He  must  see 
this  woman;  she  was  their  celebrated  parlor 
Bolshevist.  Ben  hated  parlor  Bolshevists. 
Did  he  know  any?  No.  Well,  then.  Any 
how,  Sophia  would  never  forgive  her  if  she 
did  not  bring  him.  Sophia  adored  celeb 
rities.  Sophia  who?  Sophia  Dawson. 
The  name  seemed  dimly  familiar  to  Ben, 
and  then  he  remembered.  It  was  the  name 
on  the  thousand -dollar  check  for  the  strike 
sufferers  that  had  come  in  the  day  before. 

They  drove  up  an  avenue  of  little  oaks  to 
a  formidable  palace  built  of  gray  stone,  so 
smoothly  faced  that  there  was  not  a  crevice 
in  the  immense  pale  fagade.  Two  men  in 
knee-breeches  opened  the  double  doors  and 
they  went  in  between  golden  grilles  and  rows 
of  tall  white  lilies.  They  were  led  through 
[84] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

a  soundless  hall,  and  up  stairs  so  thickly 
carpeted  that  the  feet  sank  in  as  in  new- 
fallen  snow,  and  finally  they  were  ushered 
through  a  small  painted  door  into  a  small 
painted  room,  which  had  been  brought  all 
the  way  from  Sienna,  and  there  they  found 
Mrs.  Dawson — a  beautiful,  worn,  world- 
weary  Mrs.  Dawson,  with  one  streak  of 
gray  in  the  front  of  her  dark  hair,  her  tragic 
eyes,  and  her  long  violet  and  black  draperies 
— a  perfect  Sibyl. 

Crystal  did  not  treat  her  as  a  Sibyl,  how 
ever.  "Hullo,  Sophie!"  she  said.  "This 
is  my  brother-in-law's  brother,  Ben  Moreton. 
He's  crazy  to  meet  you.  You'll  like  him. 
I  can't  stay  because  I'm  dining  somewhere 
or  other,  but  he's  not." 

"Will  he  dine  with  me?"  said  Mrs.  Dawson 
in  a  wonderful  deep,  slow  voice — "just  stay 
on  and  dine  with  me  alone?" 

Ben  began  to  say  that  he  couldn't,  but 
Crystal  said  yes,  that  he  would  be  de 
lighted  to,  and  that  she  would  stop  for 
him  again  about  half  past  nine,  and  that 
it  was  a  wonderful  plan,  and  then  she  went 
away. 

Mrs.  Dawson  seemed  to  take  it  all  as  a 
[851 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

matter  of  course.  "Sit  down,  Mr.  Moreton, '  * 
she  said.  "I  have  a  quarrel  with  you." 

Ben  could  not  help  feeling  a  little  dis 
turbed  by  the  way  he  had  been  injected  into 
Mrs.  Dawson's  evening  without  her  volition. 
He  did  not  sit  down. 

"You  know,"  he  said,  "there  isn't  any 
reason  why  you  should  have  me  to  dine  just 
because  Crystal  says  so.  I  do  want  to  thank 
you  for  the  check  you  sent  in  to  us  for  the 
strike  fund.  It  will  do  a  lot  of  good." 

"Oh,  that,"  replied  Mrs.  Dawson.  "They 
are  fighting  all  our  battles  for  us." 

"It  cheered  us  up  in  the  office.  I  wanted 
to  tell  you,  and  now  I  think  I'll  go.  I  dare 
say  you  are  dining  out,  anyhow — " 

Her  eyes  flashed  at  him.  "Dining  out!" 
she  exclaimed,  as  if  the  suggestion  insulted 
her.  "You  evidently  don't  know  me.  I 
never  dine  out.  I  have  nothing  in  common 
with  these  people.  I  lead  a  very  lonely  life. 
You  do  me  a  favor  by  staying.  You  and  I 
could  exchange  ideas.  There  is  no  one  in 
Newport  whom  I  can  talk  to — reactionaries." 

"Miss  Cord  is  not  exactly  a  reactionary," 
said  Ben,  sitting  down. 

Mrs.  Dawson  smiled.  "Crystal  is  not  a 
[86] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

reactionary;  Crystal  is  a  child,"  she  replied. 
"But  what  can  you  expect  of  William  Cord's 
daughter?  He  is  a  dangerous  and  disin 
tegrating  force — cold — cynical — he  feels  not 
the  slightest  public  responsibility  for  his 
possessions."  Mrs.  Dawson  laid  her  hand 
on  her  heart  as  if  it  were  weighted  with  all 
her  jewels  and  footmen  and  palaces.  "Most 
Bourbons  are  cynical  about  human  life,  but 
he  goes  farther;  he  is  cynical  about  his  own 
wealth.  And  that  brings  me  to  my  quarrel 
with  you,  Mr.  Moreton.  How  could  you 
let  your  brother  spend  his  beautiful  vigorous 
youth  as  a  parasite  to  Cord's  vapid  son? 
Was  that  consistent  with  your  beliefs?" 

This  attack  on  his  consistency  from  a  lady 
whose  consistency  seemed  even  more  flagrant 
amused  Ben,  but  as  he  listened  he  was  obliged 
to  admit  that  there  was  a  great  deal  of  good 
sense  in  what  she  had  to  say  about  David, 
whom  she  had  met  once  or  twice  at  the  Cords'. 
Ben  was  too  candid  and  eager  not  to  ask  her 
before  long  the  question  that  was  in  his 
mind — how  it  was  possible  for  a  woman 
holding  her  views  to  be  leading  a  life  so 
opposed  to  them. 

She  was  not  at  all  offended,  and  even  less 
7  [87] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

at  a  loss  for  an  answer.  "I  am  not  a  free 
agent,  Mr.  Moreton,"  she  said.  "Unhappily, 
before  I  began  to  think  at  all,  I  had  under 
taken  certain  obligations.  The  law  allows 
a  woman  to  dispose  of  everything  but  her 
property  while  she  is  still  a  child.  I  married 
at  eighteen." 

It  was  a  story  not  without  interest  and 
Mrs.  Dawson  told  it  well.  There  does  not 
live  a  man  who  would  not  have  been  inter 
ested. 

They  dined,  not  in  the  great  dining  room 
downstairs,  nor  even  in  the  painted  room 
from  Sienna,  but  in  a  sort  of  loggia  that 
opened  from  it,  where,  beyond  the  shaded 
lights,  Ben  could  watch  the  moon  rise  out 
of  the  sea. 

It  was  a  perfect  little  meal,  short,  delicious, 
and  quickly  served  by  three  servants.  He 
enjoyed  it  thoroughly,  although  he  found  his 
hostess  a  strangely  confusing  companion. 
He  would  make  up  his  mind  that  she  was  a 
sincere  soul  captured  by  her  environment, 
when  a  freshly  discovered  jewel  on  her  long 
fingers  would  shake  his  faith.  And  he  would 
just  decide  that  she  was  a  melodramatic 
fraud,  when  she  would  surprise  him  by  her 
[88] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

scholarly  knowledge  of  social  problems.  She 
had  read  deeply,  knew  several  languages, 
and  had  known  many  of  the  European  leaders. 
Such  phrases  as  "Jaures  wrote  me  ten  days 
before  he  died — "  were  frequent,  but  not  too 
frequent,  on  her  lips. 

By  the  time  Crystal  stopped  for  him  Ben 
had  begun  to  feel  like  a  child  who  has  lost 
his  mother  in  a  museum,  or  as  Dante  might 
have  felt  if  he  had  missed  Virgil  from  his  side. 
When  he  bade  Mrs.  Dawson  good  night,  she 
asked  him  to  come  back. 

"Come  and  spend  September  here,"  she 
said,  as  if  it  were  a  small  thing.  "You  can 
work  all  day  if  you  like.  I  sha'n't  disturb 
you,  and  you  need  never  see  a  soul.  It  will 
do  you  good." 

He  was  touched  by  the  invitation,  but  of 
course  he  refused  it.  He  tried  to  explain 
tactfully,  but  clearly,  why  it  was  that  he 
couldn't  do  that  sort  of  thing — that  the 
editor  of  Liberty  did  not  take  his  holiday  at 
Newport. 

She  understood,  and  sighed.     "Ah,  yes," 
she  said.     "I'm  like  that  man  in  mythology 
whom  neither  the  sky  nor  the  earth  would 
receive.    I'm  very  lonely,  Mr.  Moreton." 
[89] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

He  found  himself  feeling  sorry  for  her,  as 
he  followed  a  footman  downstairs,  his  feet 
sinking  into  the  carpets  at  each  step.  Crystal 
in  the  blue  car  was  at  the  door.  She  was 
bareheaded  and  the  wind  had  been  blowing 
her  hair  about. 

"Well,"  she  said,  as  he  got  in,  "did  you 
have  a  good  time?  I'm  sure  you  had  a  good 
dinner." 

"Excellent,  but  confusing.  I  don't  quite 
get  your  friend." 

"You  don't  understand  Sophia?"  Crystal's 
tone  expressed  surprise.  "You  mean  her 
jewels  and  her  footmen?  Why,  Ben,  it's 
just  like  the  fathers  of  this  country  who 
talked  about  all  men  being  equal  and  yet 
were  themselves  slaveholders.  She  sincerely 
believes  those  things  in  a  way,  and  then  it's 
such  a  splendid  role  to  play,  and  she  enjoys 
that;  and  then  it  teases  Freddie  Dawson. 
Freddie  is  rather  sweet  if  he's  thoroughly 
unhappy,  and  this  keeps  him  unhappy  almost 
all  the  time.  Did  she  ask  you  to  stay?  I 
meant  her  to." 

"Yes,  she  did;  but  of  course  I  couldn't." 

"Oh,  Ben,  why  not?" 

This  brought  them  once  more  to  the  dis- 
[90] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

cussion  of  the  barrier.  This  time  Ben  felt 
he  could  make  her  see.  He  said  that  she 
must  look  at  it  this  way — that  in  a  war  you 
could  not  go  and  stay  in  enemy  country, 
however  friendly  your  personal  relations 
might  be.  Well,  as  far  as  he  was  concerned 
this  was  a  war,  a  class  war. 

They  were  headed  for  the  Ocean  Drive, 
and  Crystal  rounded  a  sharp  turn  before 
she  answered  seriously: 

"But  I  thought  you  didn't  believe  in 
war." 

"I  don't,"  he  answered.  "I  hate  it— I 
hate  all  violence.  We — labor,  I  mean — 
didn't  initiate  this,  but  when  men  won't  see, 
when  they  have  power  and  won't  stop  abus 
ing  it,  there  is  only  one  way  to  make — " 

"Why,  Ben,"  said  Crystal,  "you're  just 
a  pacifist  in  other  people's  quarrels,  but  as 
militaristic  as  can  be  in  your  own.  I'm  not 
a  pacifist,  but  I'm  a  better  one  than  you, 
because  I  don't  believe  in  emphasizing  any 
difference  between  human  beings.  That's 
why  I  want  a  League  of  Nations.  I  hate 
gangs — all  women  really  do.  Little  girls 
don't  form  gangs  like  little  boys.  Every 
settlement  worker  knows  that.  I  won't  have 
[91] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

you  say  that  I  belong  to  the  other  group.  I 
won't  be  classified.  I'm  a  human  being — 
and  I  intend  to  behave  as  such." 

Since  she  had  left  him  she  had  been  im 
mersed  again  in  her  old  life — her  old  friends 
— and  the  result  had  been  to  make  her  won 
der  if  her  experience  with  Ben  had  been  as 
wonderful  as  it  had  seemed.  When  she 
stopped  for  him  she  had  been  almost  prepared 
to  find  that  the  wild  joy  of  their  meetings 
had  been  something  accidental  and  tempo 
rary,  and  that  only  a  stimulating  and  pleasant 
friendship  was  left.  But  as  soon  as  she  saw 
that  he  really  regarded  their  differences 
seriously,  all  her  own  prudence  and  doubt 
melted  away.  She  knew  she  was  ready  to 
make  any  sacrifices  for  him,  and  in  view  of 
that  all  talk  of  obstacles  was  folly. 

She  stopped  the  car  on  the  point  of  the 
island,  with  the  open  sea  on  one  hand,  the 
harbor  on  the  other.  In  front  of  them  the 
lightship  was  moving  with  a  slow,  majestic 
roll,  and  to  the  right  was  the  long  festoon 
of  Narragansett  lights,  and  as  they  stopped 
the  lighted  bulk  of  the  New  York  boat 
appeared,  making  its  way  toward  Point 
Judith. 

[92] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

His  prolonged  silence  began  to  frighten 
her. 

"Ben,"  she  said,  "do  you  seriously  mean 
that  you  believe  friendship  between  us  is 
impossible?" 

"Friendship,  nothing,"  answered  Moreton. 
"I  love  you." 

He  said  it  as  if  it  had  always  been  under 
stood  between  them,  as  of  course  it  had,  but 
the  instant  he  said  it,  he  gave  her  a  quick, 
appealing  look  to  see  how  she  would  take  so 
startling  an  assertion. 

If  Crystal  had  poured  out  just  what  was 
in  her  mind  at  that  second  she  would  have 
answered:  "Of  course  you  do.  I've  known 
that  longer  than  you  have.  And  can't  you 
see  that  if  I  had  had  any  doubt  about  its 
being  true,  I'd  have  taken  steps  to  make  it 
true?  But,  as  I  really  did  not  doubt  it, 
I've  been  able  to  be  quite  passive  and  leave 
it  mostly  to  you,  which  I  so  much  prefer." 

But  rigorous  candor  is  rarely  attained, 
and  Crystal  did  not  say  this.  In  fact,  for 
a  few  seconds  she  did  not  say  anything,  but 
merely  allowed  her  eyes  to  shine  upon  him, 
with  the  inevitable  result  that  at  the  end  of 
precisely  six  seconds  of  their  benevolent 
[93] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

invitation  he  took  her  in  his  arms  and  kissed 
her.  It  was  a  very  unprotected  point,  and 
several  cars  were  standing  not  too  far  away, 
but  Crystal,  who  had  an  excellent  sense  of 
proportion,  made  no  objection  whatever. 
She  was  being  proved  right  in  two  important 
particulars — first,  that  she  was  a  human 
being,  and  second,  that  there  was  no  barrier 
between  them.  She  was  very  generous  about 
it.  She  did  not  say,  "Where's  your  barrier 
now?"  or  anything  like  that;  she  simply 
said  nothing,  and  the  barrier  passed  out  of 
the  conversation  and  was  no  more  seen. 

Very  soon,  alleging  that  she  must  get 
home  at  the  time  at  which  she  usually  did 
get  home  from  dinners,  she  took  him  back; 
but  she  soothed  him  with  the  promise  of  an 
uninterrupted  day  to  follow. 

Time — the  mere  knowledge  of  unbroken 
hours  ahead — is  a  boon  which  real  love  cannot 
do  without.  Minor  feelings  may  flourish 
on  snatched  interviews  and  stolen  meetings, 
but  love  demands — and  usually  gets — pro 
tected  leisure.  The  next  day  these  lovers 
had  it.  They  spent  the  morning,  when  Mr. 
Cord  was  known  to  be  playing  golf,  at  the 
Cords'  house,  and  then  when  Mr.  Cord  tel- 
[94] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

ephoned  that  he  was  staying  to  luncheon 
at  the  club,  if  Crystal  did  not  object  (and 
Crystal  did  not),  she  and  Ben  arranged  a 
picnic — at  least  Tomes  did,  and  they  went 
off  about  one  o'clock  in  the  blue  car.  They 
went  to  a  pool  in  the  rocks  that  Crystal  had 
always  known  about,  with  high  walls  around 
it,  and  here,  with  a  curtain  of  foam  between 
them  and  the  sea,  for  the  waves  were  rising, 
they  ate  lunch,  as  much  alone  as  on  a  desert 
island. 

It  was  here  that  Ben  asked  her  to  marry 
him,  or,  to  be  accurate,  it  was  here  that  they 
first  began  talking  about  their  life  together, 
and  whether  Nora  would  become  reconciled 
to  another  woman  about  the  flat. 

The  nearest  approach  to  a  definite  pro 
posal  was  Ben's  saying: 

"You  would  not  mind  my  saying  some 
thing  about  all  this  to  your  father  before  I 
go  this  evening,  would  you?" 

And  Crystal  replied:  "Poor  father!  It 
will  be  a  blow,  I'm  afraid." 

"Well,"  said  Ben,"he  told  me  himself  that 
he  liked  me  better  than  David." 

"That's  not  saying  much." 

At  this  Ben  laughed  lightly. 
[95] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

He  might  have  had  his  wrong-headed 
notions  about  barriers,  but  he  was  not  so 
un-American  as  to  regard  a  father  as  an 
obstacle. 

"But,  oh,  Crystal,"  he  added,  "suppose 
you  find  you  do  hate  being  poor.  It  is  a 
bore  in  some  ways." 

Crystal,  who  had  been  tucking  away  the 
complicated  dishes  of  her  luncheon  basket, 
looked  at  Ben  and  lightly  sucked  one  finger 
to  which  some  raspberry  jam  from  Tomes's 
supernal  sandwiches  had  adhered. 

"I  sha'n't  mind  it  a  bit,  Ben,"  she  said, 
"and  for  a  good  reason — because  I'm  terribly 
conceited."  He  did  not  understand  at  all, 
and  she  went  on:  "I  believe  I  shall  be  just 
as  much  of  a  person — perhaps  more — with 
out  money.  The  women  who  really  mind 
being  poor  are  the  humble-minded  ones,  who 
think  that  they  are  made  by  their  clothes 
and  their  lovely  houses  and  their  maids  and 
their  sables.  When  they  lose  them  they 
lose  all  their  personality,  and  of  course  that 
terrifies  them.  I  don't  think  I  shall  lose 
mine.  Does  it  shock  you  to  know  that  I 
think  such  a  lot  of  myself?" 

It  appeared  it  did  not  shock  him  at  all. 
[96] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

When  they  reached  the  house  she  estab 
lished  him  in  the  drawing-room  and  went 
off  to  find  her  father. 

She  was  a  true  woman,  by  which  is  meant 
now  and  always  that  she  preferred  to  allow 
a  man  to  digest  his  dinner  before  she  tried 
to  bring  him  to  a  rational  opinion.  But  in 
this  case  her  hands  were  tied.  The  Cords 
dined  at  eight — or  sometimes  a  little  later, 
and  Ben's  boat  left  for  New  York  at  half 
past  nine,  so  that  it  would  be  utterly  impos 
sible  to  postpone  the  discussion  of  her  future 
until  after  dinner.  It  had  to  be  done  at  once. 

Crystal  ran  up  and  knocked  at  his  bed 
room  door.  Loud  splashings  from  the  ad 
joining  bathrom  were  all  the  answer  she  got. 
She  sat  down  on  the  stairs  and  waited.  Those 
are  the  moments  that  try  men's  and  even 
women's  souls.  For  the  first  time  her  enter 
prise  seemed  to  her  a  little  reckless.  For 
an  instant  she  had  the  surprising  experience 
of  recognizing  the  fact  that  Ben  was  a  total 
stranger.  She  looked  at  the  gray-stone 
stairway  on  which  she  was  sitting  and  thought 
that  her  life  had  been  as  safe  and  sheltered 
as  a  cloister,  and  now,  steered  by  this  total 
stranger,  she  proposed  to  launch  herself  on 
[97] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

an  uncharted  course  of  change.  And  to 
this  program  she  was  to  bring  her  father's 
consent — for  she  knew  very  well  that  if  she 
couldn't,  Ben  wouldn't  be  able  to — in  the 
comparatively  short  time  between  now  and 
dinner.  Then,  the  splashing  having  ceased, 
the  sound  of  bureau  drawers  succeeded,  and 
Crystal  sprang  up  and  knocked  again. 

"That  you,  Peters?"  said  an  unencouraging 
voice.  (Peters  was  Mr.  Cord's  valet.) 

"No,  dear,  it's  I,"  said  Crystal. 

"Oh,  come  in,"  said  Mr.  Cord.  He  was 
standing  in  the  middle  of  the  room  in  his 
shirt  sleeves  and  gloomily  contemplating  the 
shirt  he  wore.  "What's  this  laundress,  any 
how?  A  Bolshevist  or  a  pastry-cook?"  he 
said.  "Did  you  ever  see  anything  like  this 
shirt?" 

Crystal  approached  and  studied  the  shirt. 
It  appeared  to  her  to  be  perfectly  done  up, 
but  she  said:  "Yes,  dear,  how  terrible!  I'll 
pack  her  off  to-morrow,  but  you  always  look 
all  right  whatever  you  wear;  that's  some 
comfort."  She  saw  that  even  this  hadn't 
done  much  good,  and,  going  to  the  heart  of 
the  problem,  she  asked,  "How  did  your 

golf  go?" 

[98] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Mr.  Cord's  gloom  gathered  as  he  answered, 
with  resignation,  "Oh,  all  right." 

His  manner  was  exactly  similar  to  Ben's 
in  his  recent  moment  of  depression,  and  not 
unlike  McKellar's  when  he  had  explained  what 
he  suffered  under  the  good  Lord's  weather. 

"Is  Eddie's  game  any  better?"  asked 
Crystal,  feeling  her  way. 

"No,"  cried  her  father,  contemptuously. 
"He's  rotten,  but  I'm  worse.  And  golf- 
clubs,  Crystal!  No  one  can  make  a  club 
any  more.  Have  you  noticed  that?  But 
the  truth  of  the  matter  is,  I'm  getting  too 
old  to  play  golf."  And  Mr.  Cord  sat  down 
with  a  good  but  unconscious  imitation  of  a 
broken  old  man. 

Of  course  Crystal  swept  this  away.  She 
scolded  him  a  little,  pointed  out  his  recent 
prowess,  and  spoke  slightingly  of  all  younger 
athletes,  but  she  really  had  not  time  to  do 
the  job  thoroughly,  for  the  thought  of  Ben, 
sitting  so  anxious  in  the  drawing-room  alone, 
hurried  her  on. 

"Anyhow,  dear,"  she  said,  "I've  come  to 
talk  to  you  about  something  terribly  impor 
tant.  What  would  you  say,  father,  if  I  told 
you  I  was  engaged?" 

[99] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Mr.  Cord  was  so  startled  that  he  said, 
what  was  rare  for  him,  the  first  thing  that 
came  into  his  head: 

"Not  to  Eddie?" 

The  true  diplomatist,  we  have  been  told, 
simply  takes  advantage  of  chance,  and 
Crystal  was  diplomatic.  "And  suppose  it 
is?"  she  replied. 

"I  should  refuse  my  consent,"  replied  her 
father. 

Crystal  looked  hurt.  "Is  there  anything 
against  Eddie,"  she  asked,  "except  his  golf?" 

"Yes,"  answered  her  father,  "there  are  two 
of  the  most  serious  things  in  the  world  against 
him — first,  that  he  doesn't  amount  to  any 
thing;  and  second,  that  you  don't  love  him." 

"No,"  Crystal  admitted,  "I  don't,  but 
then — love — father,  isn't  love  rather  a  serious 
undertaking  nowadays?  Is  it  a  particularly 
helpful  adjunct  to  marriage?  Look  at  poor 
Eugenia.  Isn't  it  really  more  sensible  to 
marry  a  nice  man  who  can  support  one,  and 
then  if  in  time  one  does  fall  in  love  with 
another  man — " 

"Never  let  me  hear  you  talk  like  that 
again,  Crystal,"  said  her  father,  with  a 
severity  and  vigor  he  seldom  showed  outside 
[100] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

of  board  meetings.  "It's  only  your  igno 
rance  of  life  that  saves  you  from  being  actu 
ally  revolting.  I'm  an  old  man  and  not  senti 
mental,  you'll  grant,  but,  take  my  word  for 
it,  love  is  the  only  hope  of  pulling  off  marriage 
successfully,  and  even  then  it's  not  easy. 
As  for  Eugenia,  I  think  she's  made  a  fool  of 
herself  and  is  going  to  be  unhappy,  but  I'd 
rather  do  what  she  has  done  than  what 
you're  contemplating.  At  least  she  cared 
for  that  fellow—" 

"I'm  glad  you  feel  like  that,  darling,"  said 
Crystal,  "because  it  isn't  Eddie  I'm  engaged 
to,  but  Ben  Moreton.  He's  waiting  down 
stairs  now." 

Mr.  Cord  started  up — his  eyes  shining  like 
black  flames. 

"By  God!  Crystal,"  he  said,  "you  sha'n't 
many  that  fellow — Eugenia — perhaps — but 
not  you." 

"But,  father,  you  said  yourself,  you 
thought  he  was  a  fine — " 

"I  don't  care  what  I  said,"  replied  Mr. 
Cord,  and,  striding  to  the  door,  he  flung  it 
open  and  called  in  a  voice  that  rolled  about 
the  stone  hall:  "Mr.  Moreton,  Mr.  Moreton! 
Come  up  here,  will  you?" 

[101] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Ben  came  bounding  up  the  stairs  like  a 
panther.  Cord  beckoned  him  in  with  a 
sharp  gesture  and  shut  the  door. 

"This  won't  do  at  all,  Moreton,"  he  said. 
"You  can't  have  Crystal." 

Ben  did  not  answer;  he  looked  very  stead 
ily  at  Cord,  who  went  on: 

"You  think  I  can't  stop  it — that  she's  of 
age  and  that  you  wouldn't  take  a  penny  of 
my  money,  anyhow.  That's  the  idea,  isn't 
it?" 

"That's  it,"  said  Ben. 

Cord  turned  sharply  to  Crystal.  "Does 
what  I  think  make  any  difference  to  you?" 
he  asked. 

"A  lot,  dear,"  she  answered,  "but  I  don't 
understand.  You  never  seemed  so  much 
opposed  to  the  radical  doctrine." 

"No,  it's  the  radical,  not  the  doctrine, 
your  father  objects  to,"  said  Ben. 

"Exactly,"  answered  Mr.  Cord.  "You've 
put  it  in  a  nutshell.  Crystal,  I'm  going  to 
tell  you  what  these  radicals  really  are — 
they're  failures — everyone  of  them.  Sincere 
enough — they  want  the  world  changed  be 
cause  they  haven't  been  able  to  get  along 
in  it  as  it  is — they  want  a  new  deal  because 
[102] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

they  don't  know  how  to  play  their  cards; 
and  when  they  get  a  new  hand,  they'll  play 
it  just  as  badly.  It's  not  their  theories  I 
object  to,  but  them  themselves.  You  think 
if  you  married  Moreton  you'd  be  going  into 
a  great  new  world  of  idealism.  You  wouldn't. 
You'd  be  going  into  a  world  of  failure — of 
the  pettiest,  most  futile  quarrels  in  the 
world.  The  chief  characteristic  of  the  man 
who  fails  is  that  he  always  believes  it's  the 
other  fellow's  fault;  and  they  hate  the  man 
who  differs  with  them  by  one  per  cent  more 
than  they  hate  the  man  who  differs  by  one 
hundred.  Has  there  ever  been  a  revolution 
where  they  did  not  persecute  their  fellow 
revolutionists  worse  than  they  persecuted 
the  old  order,  or  where  the  new  rule  wasn't 
more  tyrannical  than  the  old?" 

"No  one  would  dispute  that,"  said  Ben. 
"It  is  the  only  way  to  win  through  to — " 

"Ah,"  said  Cord,  "I  know  what  you're 
going  to  say,  but  I  tell  you,  you  win  through 
to  liberal  practices  when,  and  only  when, 
the  conservatives  become  converted  to  your 
ideas,  and  put  them  through  for  you.  That's 
why  I  say  I  have  no  quarrel  with  radical 
doctrines — they  are  coming,  always  coming, 
8  [ 103  ] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

but" — Cord  paused  to  give  his  words  full 
weight — "I  hate  the  radical." 

There  was  a  little  pause.  Crystal,  who 
had  sunk  into  a  low  chair,  raised  her  eyes 
to  Ben,  as  if  she  expected  a  passionate  con 
tradiction  from  him,  but  it  did  not  come. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  after  a  moment,  "that's 
all  true,  Mr.  Cord — with  limitations;  but, 
granting  it,  you've  put  my  side,  too.  What 
are  we  to  say  of  the  conservative — the  man 
who  has  no  vision  of  his  own — who  has  to 
go  about  stealing  his  beliefs  from  the  other 
side?  He's  very  efficient  at  putting  them 
into  effect — but  efficient  as  a  tool,  as  a  serv 
ant.  Look  at  the  mess  he  makes  of  his  own 
game  when  he  tries  to  act  on  his  own  ideas. 
He  crushes  democracy  with  an  iron  efficiency, 
and  he  creates  communism.  He  closes  the 
door  to  trade-unionism  and  makes  a  revolu 
tion.  That's  efficiency  for  you.  We  rad 
icals  are  not  so  damned  inefficient,  while 
we  let  the  conservatives  do  our  work  for  us." 

"Well,  let  it  be  revolution,  then,"  said 
Cord.  "I  believe  you're  right.  It's  coming, 
but  do  you  want  to  drag  a  girl  like  Crystal 
into  it?  Think  of  her!  Say  you  take  her, 
as  I  suppose  a  young  fellow  like  you  can  do. 
[104] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

She'd  have  perhaps  ten  years  of  an  exciting 
division  of  allegiance  between  your  ideas 
and  the  way  she  had  been  brought  up,  and 
the  rest  of  her  life  (for,  believe  me,  as  we  get 
older  we  all  return  to  our  early  traditions) 
— the  rest  of  her  life  she'd  spend  regretting 
the  ties  and  environment  of  her  youth.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  she  gives  you  up  she  will 
have  regrets,  too,  I  know,  but  they  won't 
wreck  her  and  embitter  her  the  way  the 
others  will." 

Ben's  face  darkened.  No  man  not  a 
colossal  egotist  could  hear  such  a  prophesy 
with  indifference.  He  did  not  at  once  an 
swer,  and  then  he  turned  to  Crystal. 

"What  do  you  think  of  that?"  he  asked. 

To  the  surprise  of  both  men,  Crystal 
replied  with  a  laugh.  "I  was  wondering," 
she  said,  "when  either  of  you  would  get 
round  to  asking  what  I  thought  of  it  all." 

"Well,  what  do  you  think?"  said  Cord, 
almost  harshly. 

Crystal  rose,  and,  slipping  her  arm  through 
his,  leaned  her  head  on  the  point  of  her 
father's  shoulder — he  was  of  a  good  height. 
"I  think,"  she  said,  "you  both  talk  beauti 
fully.  I  was  so  proud  of  you  both — saying 
[1051 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

such  profound  things  so  easily,  and  keeping 
your  tempers  so  perfectly"  (both  brows 
smoothed  out),  "and  it  was  all  the  more 
wonderful  because,  it  seemed  to  me,  you 
were  both  talking  about  things  you  knew 
nothing  about." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  burst  from  both 
men  with  simultaneous  astonishment. 

"Ben,  dear,  father  doesn't  know  any 
radicals — except  you,  and  he's  only  seen 
you  twice.  Father  dear,  I  don't  believe 
Ben  ever  talked  five  minutes  with  an  able, 
successful  conservative  until  he  came  here 
to-day." 

"You're  going  to  throw  me  over,  Crystal?" 
said  Ben,  seeing  her  pose  more  clearly  than 
he  heard  her  words. 

"No,"  said  Mr.  Cord,  bitterly,  "she's 
going  to  throw  over  an  old  man  in  favor  of 
a  young  one." 

"You  silly  creatures,"  said  Crystal,  with 
a  smile  that  made  the  words  affectionate 
and  not  rude.  "How  can  I  ever  throw 
either  of  you  over?  I'm  going  to  be  Ben's 
wife,  and  I  am  my  father's  daughter.  I'm 
going  to  be  those  two  things  for  all  my 
life." 

[106] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

Ben  took  her  hand.  She  puzzled  him, 
but  he  adored  her.  "But  some  day,  Crystal," 
he  said,  "you  will  be  obliged  to  choose  be 
tween  our  views — mine  or  your  father's. 
You  must  see  that." 

"He's  right,"  her  father  chimed  in.  "This 
is  not  a  temporary  difference  of  opinion,  you 
know,  Crystal.  This  cleavage  is  as  old  as 
mankind — the  radical  against  the  conserva 
tive.  Time  doesn't  reconcile  them." 

Again  the  idea  came  to  her:  "They  do 
love  to  form  gangs,  the  poor  dears."  Aloud 
she  said:  "Yes,  but  the  two  types  are  rarely 
pure  ones.  Why,  father,  you  think  Ben  is 
a  radical,  but  he's  the  most  hidebound  con 
servative  about  some  things — much  worse 
than  you — about  free  verse,  for  instance.  I 
read  a  long  editorial  about  it  not  a  month 
ago.  He  really  thinks  anyone  who  defends 
it  ought  to  be  deported  to  some  poetic  limbo. 
Ben,  you  think  my  father  is  conservative. 
But  there's  a  great  scandal  in  his  mental 
life.  He's  a  Baconian — " 

"He  thinks  Bacon  wrote  the  plays!"  ex 
claimed  Ben,  really  shocked. 

"Certainly  I  do,"  answered  Mr.  Cord. 
"Every  man  who  uses  his  mind  must  think 
[1071 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

so.  There  is  nothing  in  favor  of  the  Shake 
speare  theory,  except  tradition — " 

He  would  have  talked  for  several  hours 
upon  the  subject,  but  Crystal  interrupted 
him  by  turning  to  Ben  and  continuing  what 
she  had  meant  to  say: 

"When  you  said  I  should  have  to  choose 
between  your  ideas,  you  meant  between  your 
political  ideas.  Perhaps  I  shall,  but  I  won't 
make  my  choice,  rest  assured,  until  I  have 
some  reason  for  believing  that  each  of  you 
knows  something — honestly  knows  some 
thing  about  the  other  one's  point  of  view." 

"I  don't  get  it,  exactly,"  said  Ben. 

She  addressed  Mr.  Cord. 

"Father,"  she  went  on,  "Ben  has  a  little 
flat  in  Charles  Street,  and  an  old  servant, 
and  that's  where  I'm  going  to  live." 

Her  father,  though  bitterly  wounded,  had 
regained  his  sardonic  calm.  "Perhaps,"  he 
said,  "you'll  bring  him  up  to  Seventy-ninth 
Street  for  Sunday  dinner  now  and  then." 

Crystal  shook  her  head.  "No,  dear," 
she  said.  "That  isn't  the  way  it's  going  to 
be.  As  soon  as  I  get  settled  and  have  time 
to  look  about  me,  I  shall  take  another  little 
flat  for  you.  You  will  live  with  us,  for  a 
[108] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

few  months  in  the  winter,  and  get  to  know 
Ben's  friends — his  gang,  as  you  would  say — 
get  to  know  them  not  as  a  philanthropist,  or 
an  employer,  or  an  observer,  but  just  as 
one  of  our  friends — see  if  they  really  are  the 
way  you  think  they  are.  And  then,  in 
March  you  shall  go  off  to  Palm  Beach  or 
Virginia  just  as  usual." 

"That's  a  fine  idea,"  said  Mr.  Cord, 
sarcastically.  "Do  you  realize  that  I  shall 
hardly  survive  your  marriage  with  the  editor 
of  Liberty.  I  shall  be  kicked  off — requested 
to  resign  from  half  a  dozen  boards  for  having 
such  a  son-in-law — " 

"There's  freedom  for  you,"  said  Ben. 

"And,"  continued  Mr.  Cord,  "if  it  were 
known  that  I  consented  to  the  marriage,  and 
actually  consorted  with  such  fellows!  You 
must  realize,  Crystal,  that  most  of  the  most 
influential  men  in  the  country  think  the 
way  Eddie  does.  Half  my  boards  are  com 
posed  of  older  Eddies." 

"You'll  do  better  to  resign  from  them, 
then,"  said  Crystal. 

Ben  had  been  very  much  struck  by  Crys 
tal's  suggestion. 

"Really,  Mr.  Cord,"  he  said,  "I  believe 
[109] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

that  is  a  great  idea  of  Crystal's.  I  really 
believe  if  capital  had  more  idea  of  the  real 
views  of  labor — as  you  said,  you  eventually 
adopt  all  our  ideas,  why  wouldn't  an  intimate 
knowledge  of  individuals  hurry  that  process?" 

"Simply  because  I  should  lose  all  influence 
with  my  own  people  by  merely  investigating 
you  in  a  friendly  spirit." 

"Glory!"  exclaimed  Ben,  with  open  con 
tempt  for  such  people.  "Think  of  penal 
izing  the  first  honest  attempt  to  understand !" 

"You  see  the  point  of  my  plan,  don't  you, 
Ben?"  said  Crystal. 

"You  bet  I  do." 

"That's  wonderful,"  she  answered,  "for 
you've  only  heard  half  of  it.  In  July, 
August,  and  September,  we  will  come  here 
to  Newport,  and  you  will  get  to  understand 
father's—" 

"Hold  on,"  cried  Ben,  "just  a  moment. 
That  is  absolutely  impossible,  Crystal.  You 
don't  understand.  The  paper  couldn't  keep 
me  a  day  if  I  did  that." 

"Ha!"  cried  Mr.  Cord,  coming  suddenly 
to  life.  "There's  freedom  for  you !" 

"That  would  be  very  cruel  of  the  owners, 
Ben,  but  if  they  did—" 
[HO] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

"It  wouldn't  be  cruel  at  all,"  said  More- 
ton.  "They  wouldn't  have  any  choice.  I 
should  have  lost  all  influence  with  my  readers, 
if  it  were  known — " 

"Glory!"  said  Mr.  Cord.  "Think  of  penal 
izing  the  first  honest  attempt  to  understand 
the  capitalistic  class!" 

Ben  stood  silent,  caught  in  the  grip  of  an 
intellectual  dilemma  which  he  felt  every 
instant  would  dissolve  itself  and  which  didn't. 

Crystal  for  the  first  time  moved  away 
from  her  father.  "Those  are  my  terms," 
she  said.  "I  stay  with  the  man  who  agrees 
to  them,  and  if  you  both  decline  them — well, 
I'll  go  off  and  try  and  open  the  oyster  by 
myself." 

There  was  a  long  momentous  pause,  and 
then  Tomes's  discreet  knock  on  the  door. 

"Mr.  Verriman  on  the  telephone,  madam." 

"I  can't  come,"  said  Crystal.  "Ask  him 
to  send  a  message." 

"Don't  you  see,  Crystal,  what  your  plan 
would  do?"  said  her  father.  "Either  it 
would  make  Moreton  a  red  revolutionist 
and  me  a  persecuting  Bourbon,  or  else  it  would 
just  ruin  us  both  for  either  of  our  objectives." 

"It  won't  ruin  you  for  my  objectives," 
[ill] 


The  Beauty  and  the  Bolshevist 

said  Crystal,  "and  women  are  more  human, 
you  know,  than  men." 

Another  knock  at  the  door.  Tomes's 
voice  again: 

"Mr.  Verriman  wishes  to  know  if  he  might 
dine  here  this  evening?" 

"No,"  said  Cord,  looking  at  Crystal. 

Crystal  raised  her  voice.  "Certainly, 
Tomes.  Say  we  shall  be  delighted  to  have 
him — at  eight." 

Both  men  turned  to  her. 

"Why  did  you  do  that,  Crystal?  Verriman 
— here — to-night?" 

Crystal  did  not  answer — the  identity  of 
their  tones,  their  words,  and  their  irritation 
with  her  should  have  told  them  the  answer, 
but  didn't. 

She  knew  that  only  opposition  to  Eddie 
and  Eddie's  many  prototypes  could  weld 
her  two  men  solidly  together. 


THE  END 


Fiction  in  a  Lighter  Mood 

THE   CHARM   SCHOOL  By  Alice  Duer  Miller 

A  handsome  youth  of  twenty-five  inherits  a 
fashionable    boarding    school    for    girls    and 
decides  to  conduct  it  in  person.     This  story 
of  his  encounters  with  effervescing  "flappers" 
is  a  delicious  blend  of  romance  and  humor. 

Illustrated 

SKINNER   MAKES    IT    FASHIONABLE 

By  Henry  Irving  Dodge 

Never  did  the  impulsive  Skinner  get  a  bigger 
idea  than  this,  his  own  Skinneresque  method  of 
downing  the  H.  C.  of  L.  Once  more  gloom 
flies  at  Skinner's  approach  like  dust  before  a 
broom.  Frontispiece.  Post  8vo.  Cloth 

EFFICIENCY    EDGAR 

By  Clarence  Budington  Kelland 

The  doings  of  "Efficiency  Edgar"  will  be  rel 
ished  by  all  who  do  not  take  life  too  seriously. 
A  merry,  well-balanced  tale,  with  Edgar  as  the 
star  performer  in  courtship,  marriage,  and 
fatherhood.  Frontispiece.  Post  8vo.  Cloth 

DUDS  By  Henry  C.  Rowland 

Captain  Plunkett,  U.  S.  A.,  found  out  that  the 
word  "dud"  can  mean  more  than  just  an  un- 
exploded  shell.  The  amazing  Miss  Melton,  the 
Sultana  diamond,  the  guileless  Olga  Karakoff 
....  DUDS!  A  whole  bookful  of  them,  in 
breathless,  glamourous  succession.  Post  8vo 

WHAT  OUTFIT,    BUDDY?        By  T.  Howard  Kelly 

Jimmy  says:  "This  ain't  no  war  book — 
nothin'  about  savin'  our  souls,  or  makin' 
the  world  safe  for  profiteers,  or  the  League 
o'  Notions  in  it — but  a  lot  about  the  helluva 
good  time  me  an'  O.  D.  had  just  the  same  as 
you  an'  your  Buddy." 

Illustrated.    Post  8vo.    Half  Cloth 

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THE  CITY  OF  COMRADES 

ABRAHAM'S    BOSOM 

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THE    LIFTED    VEIL 

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THE    WILD  OLIVE 

THE  STREET  CALLED  STRAIGHT 

THE    SIDE    OF    THE   ANGELS 

THE    WAY   HOME 

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IN    THE    GARDEN   OF   CHARITY 

THE    STEPS   OF   HONOR 

LET  NOT  MAN  PUT  ASUNDER 


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NEW  YORK      [ESTABLISHED  1817]       LONDON 


Variety  in  New  Fiction 

WHAT'S  THE  WORLD   COMING   TO? 

By  Rupert  Hughes 

This  story  of  turbulent  youth  caught  up  in 
the  maelstrom  of  New  York,  is  a  novel  of  to 
day  for  to-day — and  to-morrow — written  with 
compelling  interest  and  veracity. 

Full-page  illustrations 

THE   BLOOD-RED    DAWN 

By  Charles  Caldwell  Dobie 

The  feeling  for  color  and  the  subtle  flavors  of 
character  that  Mr.  Dobie's  short  stories  are 
known  for,  distinguish  this,  his  first  novel — 
set  where  Orient  and  Occident  meet  in  the 
City  of  the  Golden  Gate.  Post  8vo.  Cloth 

LEER  IE  By  Ruth  Sawyer 

For  the  last  two  years  Ruth  Sawyer  has  given 
her  readers  literary  treats  in  her  stories  of 
Doctor  Danny.  And  now  comes  "Leerie,"  a 
young  nurse  who  was  so  engrossed  in  her  work 
that  she  almost  failed  to  marry  the  "finest 
gentleman  in  the  land"  when  he  came  along. 
Illustrated.  Post  8vo.  Cloth 

ALL-WOOL   MORRISON  By  Holman  Day 

Another  of  Holman  Day's  great  novels  of 
the  North  country — this  time  a  story  of 
politics,  love,  and  business,  set  in  a  prosperous 
New  England  manufacturing  town — a  novel 
that  like  its  hero  is  "  all  wool  and  a  yard  wide." 

Frontispiece 

THE  THREAD   OF    FLAME  By  Basil  King 

In  "The  Thread  of  Flame,"  as  in  "The 
Inner  Shrine"  and  "The  Wild  Olive,"  Basil 
King  lifts  the  curtain  on  his  story  at  a  great 
dramatic  moment;  he  develops  a  fast- moving 
tale  of  a  lost  identity  and  of  a  resultant  do 
mestic  problem  that  keeps  the  reader  in  con 
stant  suspense.  Illustrated.  PostSvo.  Cloth 

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Recent  Verse — for  Every  Mood 

THE   CHEERY   WAY:    A  Bit  of  Verse  for  Every  Day 

By  John  Kendrick  Bangs 

The  verse  of  John  Kendrick  Bangs  needs  no 
introduction.  This  delightful  collection,  a 
verse  for  every  day  of  the  year,  with  ap 
propriate  decorations,  makes  a  charming 
book  to  own  or  give.  Post  8vo.  Cloth 

DEANTHA  GOES  THE   PRIMROSE   WAY 

By  Adelaide  Manola  Hughes 

Vivid  dramas  of  a  woman's  soul  in  verse 
of  scintillant  beauty.  "Intense,  convincing, 
realistic,"  says  Edward  J.  Wheeler,  President 
of  The  Poetry  Society. 

BALLADS  OF  OLD   NEW   YORK 

By  Arthur  Guiterman 

In  this,  his  latest  book  of  charming  verse, 
Mr.  Guiterman  gives  a  new  and  whimsically 
delightful  interest  to  the  quaint,  historical 
side  of  Old  New  York.  The  book  is  sym 
pathetically  and  profusely  illustrated  in  pen- 
and-ink  by  J.  Scott  Williams,  and  is  attrac 
tively  bound  and  printed  on  toned  paper. 

Illustrated.     Cloth 

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